Meta and Google conspired to target 13 to 17-year-old children with Instagram ads on YouTube, according to a new report from the Financial Times. In doing so, Google went against its own rules for how to treat minors online.
The Financial Times said it received official documents and spoke to people familiar with the matter. The publication reported Google worked on a marketing campaign for Meta and showed advertisements promoting its video and photo platform, Instagram, to teenagers using a loophole.
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Google reportedly targeted a group of users labeled as “unknown” in its advertising system. The people familiar with the matter said Google knew those “unknown” users were mostly people under the age of 18.
According to Google’s website, “‘unknown’ refers to people whose age, gender, parental status or household income we haven’t identified.”
Google has advertising rules in place banning ads targeted for users under the age of 18 based on demographics. The Financial Times reported Google employees knowingly disguised the advertising campaign’s true intent.
Google and Meta allegedly partnered with Spark Foundry and launched the ad campaign in the U.S. in May, just five months after Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents who accused his company of allowing their children harm on the social media platform.
The companies ran a trial marketing campaign in Canada between February and April of 2024.
The marketing campaign reportedly came about to promote Facebook, which was losing younger users to rival TikTok, and to boost Google’s advertising earnings.
The Financial Times said it spoke to a representative with Google who said the company has launched an investigation and that the campaign has been canceled.
In July, the U.S. Senate passed two bills aimed at protecting children online. One piece of legislation is the Kids Online Safety Act and would require social media companies to enact a “legal duty of care” in protecting kids. The other is the Children’s and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, which allows kids and parents more control over settings and blocks targeted ads for underage users.
