Google and Meta use loophole to target Instagram ads to young people on YouTube

Google and Meta have struck a secret deal to target Instagram ads to teens on YouTube, skirting Google’s own rules about how minors are treated online. Documents obtained by the Financial Times and information from people familiar with the matter reveal that Google worked on a marketing project for Meta, targeting YouTube users aged 13 to 17 with ads promoting Instagram’s photo and video app.

Instagram’s campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labelled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew to be under-18s. Documents seen by the Financial Times suggest steps were taken to disguise the true intent of the campaign.

The project ignored Google’s rules that prohibit personalizing and targeting ads to people under 18, including serving ads based on demographic data. Google also has policies against circumventing its own guidelines, known as “proxy targeting.”

Meta’s YouTube campaign, aimed at attracting younger users to Instagram, was already underway when Mark Zuckerberg made a dramatic appearance before Congress in January, where he apologized to the families of children who had been victims of sexual exploitation and abuse on Facebook’s platforms.

Google and Meta have struck a secret deal to target Instagram ads to teens on YouTube, skirting Google’s own rules about how minors are treated online. Documents obtained by the Financial Times and information from people familiar with the matter reveal that Google worked on a marketing project for Meta, targeting YouTube users aged 13 to 17 with ads promoting Instagram’s photo and video app.

Instagram’s campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labelled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew to be under-18s. Documents seen by the Financial Times suggest steps were taken to disguise the true intent of the campaign.

The project ignored Google’s rules that prohibit personalizing and targeting ads to people under 18, including serving ads based on demographic data. Google also has policies against circumventing its own guidelines, known as “proxy targeting.”

Meta’s YouTube campaign, aimed at attracting younger users to Instagram, was already underway when Mark Zuckerberg made a dramatic appearance before Congress in January, where he apologized to the families of children who had been victims of sexual exploitation and abuse on Facebook’s platforms.

The Silicon Valley-based duo, who are typically fierce competitors as the world’s two largest online advertising platforms, embarked on the effort late last year. As Google sought to shore up its advertising revenue, Google struggled to retain the attention of younger users against fast-growing rivals like TikTok. Last week, Zuckerberg told investors that a recent effort to engage more 18- to 29-year-olds was paying off.

The companies worked with Spark Foundry, a U.S. subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to launch the marketing pilot program in Canada between February and April this year, according to people and documents obtained by the Financial Times.

Due to its perceived success, the program was piloted in the U.S. in May. The companies planned to expand it further to international markets and promote other Meta apps, such as Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the pilot programs were small, Google saw them as an opportunity to grow into a more lucrative “full-funnel” relationship with Meta, which would involve flashier and more expensive “branded” ads on YouTube as well as its other platforms.

When contacted by the Financial Times, Google launched an investigation into the allegations. The project has been canceled, a person familiar with the decision said.

Google stated: “We prohibit ads from being personalized to people under the age of 18, period. These policies go far beyond what is necessary and are supported by technical safeguards. We confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here because no registered YouTube user known to be under the age of 18 was directly targeted by the company.”

However, Google did not deny the use of the “unknown” category, saying: “We will also take additional steps to reinforce with sales representatives that they should not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns that attempt to circumvent our policies.”

Meta said it disagreed that selecting the “unknown” audience constituted personalization or evasion of any rules, adding that it followed its own policies, as well as those of its partners, when advertising its services. It did not respond to questions about whether staff knew that the “unknown” group was made up of younger users.

“We have been transparent about marketing our apps to young people as a place for them to connect with friends, find community and discover their interests,” Meta said.

Spark Foundry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Last week, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the Kids Online Safety Act, which would establish a duty of care on social media platforms to protect children from harmful online content, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement that brings the U.S. closer to passing major child safety legislation in Silicon Valley.

“Big Tech cannot be trusted to protect our children,” Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn told the FT when asked about the Google-Meta partnership. She called on Congress to pass the Kosa bill. “They have once again been caught exploiting our children, and these Silicon Valley executives have proven that they will always prioritize profit over our children.”

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which advocates for children’s privacy, said: “Meta is exploiting young people and has found a backdoor.”

Meta has long faced scrutiny for its policies toward minors. It is being sued by 33 states, accusing it of “manipulative” practices with young users, which it denies. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is also seeking to prohibit Meta from profiting from teen audiences as part of an update to an existing privacy agreement, which the company is challenging in court.

In 2021, the company shelved plans to launch a kids’ version of Instagram following public backlash and after whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal Facebook research suggesting the app is harmful to teens’ mental health.

How an unlikely partnership developed

According to documents and several people familiar with the matter, the Meta-Google project originated in early 2023, when Spark Foundry, acting on Meta’s behalf, asked a series of partners to come up with an advertising campaign called “Meta IG Connects.”

Spark was working on behalf of Meta’s marketing data science team and was tasked with getting more “Gen Z” customers to download Instagram, which had been losing users to rival apps, especially TikTok, internal documents show.

Instagram has been worried about losing its “teen position” for years. It previously allocated its entire marketing budget to targeting teenagers, especially the “early high school” 13- to 15-year-old segment, according to a 2021 New York Times report.

In an email seen by the Financial Times, a Spark ad manager asked Google to launch the campaign, specifically identifying the “primary” target audience as “13-17” year-olds and demanding that it be measured by data collected directly from viewers. A secondary target was 18-24 year-olds.

In 2021, Google introduced stronger protections for teens on its sites. “We will block ads from being targeted based on the age, gender or interests of people under 18,” it said.

Google’s “Teen Ad Serving Protections” policy adds: “We expect all of our advertisers to follow local legal requirements when using our products…as well as all Google Ads policies.”

But the Google team has proposed a workaround to get around the policy: a group called “unknown,” people familiar with the matter said.

On its website, Google says the “unknown” group “refers to people whose age, gender, parental status, or household income we have not identified.” But the internet group’s team had thousands of data points on everything from users’ locations via phone masts to their app downloads and online activities. That allowed them to determine with a high degree of confidence that those in the “unknown” group included many younger users, particularly those under 18.

Turning off other age groups for which they had demographic data left only the unknown group, with its high proportion of minors and children: It was described as a way to “hack” the audience protections in their system, one of the people said.

“Targeting the ‘unknown’ category reaches a diverse and broad audience of people,” including those who have turned off ad personalization, Google said in response to questions about the use of the tactic to circumvent its policy.

Meta said: “Google’s ‘unknown’ targeting option is available to all advertisers — not just Meta — and we have clear principles that we follow when it comes to how we market our apps to teens on other platforms.”

During the pitching process, another email from Spark in late 2023 asked Google to provide Meta with “platform-specific data and insights into teen behavior.” This would “allow us to adapt and refine our media tactics, messaging, and creative execution,” it said.

As part of its proposal, Google also boasted of its “really impressive” usage by 13- to 17-year-olds, easily surpassing daily engagement on TikTok and Instagram, the documents show.

Google won the Spark mandate, and teams on both sides took precautions, banning any direct reference to the age range in writing, one of the people said. The team used euphemisms in presentations, such as slides with just the words “embrace the unknown,” according to documents reviewed by the FT.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy said of the merger between Meta and Alphabet-owned Google: “It shows how both companies continue to be powerful, misleading, and untrustworthy platforms that require rigorous regulation and oversight.”

With information from the Financial Times