Heads Up Advertisers: Google’s Ad Placements Are Going Rogue

Well, this isn’t good. The Wall Street Journal reports that 4 out of 5 video ads placed by Google on third-party sites violate Google’s own promised standards, according to new research quoted by the Journal.

Google’s YouTube runs ads on its own platform, but it also places video ads on external sites through its Google Video Partners program. The company charges a premium for this service, promising that ads will be placed on high-quality sites, before the page’s main video content, with sound on, and that brands will only pay for ads that are not skipped.

🚨 Placements Gone Wrong

Research from Adalytics found Google violates those standards 80% of the time. They say that while Google was charging advertisers for “premium” inventory, it was serving ads in small, muted, automatically-played videos off to the side of a page’s main content, on sites that don’t meet its monetization standards, among other violations.

Ad placements appeared on low-quality sites that trafficked misinformation, “clickbait” content, and potentially pirated material.

Some of the brands with these ads included:

• Johnson & Johnson
• Disney+
• Sephora

💸 Ad Budget Fallout

The study also found that more than half of the ad budget allocated by brands in Adalytics’ sample was spent on non-YouTube properties.

Now, some say they want compensation for ads that ran in the wrong places and formats.

Google has disputed these claims and maintains it has strict policies for the program that serves video ads on third-party sites.

Images: Adalytics

AI Spam Sites Score Major Advertisers

Another L for Google today as a new report from NewsGuard reveals that ads for major brands are appearing on AI-generated spam sites.

The study found that more than 140 brands ran ads on unreliable artificial intelligence-generated news sites, likely unaware that the ads were there.

It also found that hundreds of these ads were placed through Google’s programmatic advertising system, which automatically selects ad placements on sites. Consequently, these AI-generated sites profit from displaying ads alongside low-quality content.

⛔ Ad Placement Violations

On one website, MedicalOutline.com, advertisers included:

• Subaru
• Citigroup
• GNC

The site promotes health misinformation like “What are 5 natural remedies for ADHD?” and “How can you prevent cancer naturally.”

The company, of course, has rules regarding ad placements, including that sites may not “place Google-served ads on pages” that include “spammy automatically-generated content.”

A spokesperson for the company told The Verge that when enforcing these policies, it focuses on the quality of the content rather than how it was created and that it blocks or removes ads from serving if it detects violations.

Google said it removed ads from “many” of the sites listed in the report, though ads remain on others.

This was just one of many marketing stories we covered today — get ALL the day’s digital marketing news by subscribing to our free newsletter and/or our free daily podcast.