Google and Meta, known for their competitive rivalry, have been secretly collaborating to target teenagers on YouTube with Instagram ads. This partnership involved promoting Instagram to 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users, bypassing Google’s own rules for treating minors online. According to the Financial Times, Google developed a marketing project for Meta to promote Instagram on YouTube with advertisements that targeted a user group labelled as “unknown” in Google’s advertising system, which was known to include a high proportion of under-18s. Documents suggest that efforts were made to conceal the true intent of the campaign. This project directly violated Google’s policies against personalising and targeting ads to under-18s and circumvented its guidelines.
The revelation comes at a time when Meta has been under scrutiny for its handling of user data and its impact on young people. Just months before this collaboration, Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress in January, apologizing to the families of children who had been exploited on his platforms. The two companies’ partnership began late last year as Google aimed to boost advertising revenue and Meta sought to retain younger users amidst competition from TikTok. They partnered with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of Publicis, to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April, and then trialled it in the US in May. They had plans to expand it internationally and promote other Meta apps such as Facebook.
Despite being small pilot programs, Google saw them as an opportunity to develop a more lucrative relationship with Meta involving high-profile brand advertisements on YouTube and other platforms. Last year, Meta announced new updates to its advertising system, including the removal of gender as a targeting option for users under 18 on Facebook and Instagram. The company claimed that these changes were meant to ensure that teens see ads relevant to their age and the products and services available in their location. However, the secret collaboration with Google suggests that Meta may not have been as committed to these changes as they initially claimed.
