Jun 28, 2023 17:00:00

A report that 'many of Google's video ads are displayed in a way that does not meet the standards promised to advertisers', and also placing ads on AI-generated sites

When you hear 'Google's video ads', many people think of the ads displayed when watching YouTube videos, but Google also distributes video ads on websites other than its own through a program called

Google Video Partners. doing. The advertising research firm, Analytics , investigated Google's advertising campaigns over a three-year period and found that a significant percentage of Google's video ads were displayed in a way that violated its promises to advertisers. Another report also reported Google ads being displayed on AI-generated, low-quality news sites.

Did Google mislead advertisers about TrueView skippable in-stream ads for the past three years?
https://adalytics.io/blog/invalid-google-video-partner-trueview-ads

Google Violated Its Standards in Ad Deals, Research Finds - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-violated-its-standards-in-ad-deals-research-finds-3e24e041

Through the video partner program, Google displays video ads distributed to YouTube on websites other than YouTube. Google said to advertisers, 'Ads will appear on high-quality websites, before the main video content on the page, with sound on, and will not be skipped for brands to pay for. Only ads that have been viewed,' he promised.

However, according to a survey of 1,100 brands using Google Ads from 2020 to 2023 by Analytics, about 50% of the video ad budgets paid by companies are external sites that do not meet the standards promised by Google. It was revealed that it was delivered to

The Wall Street Journal, which shared the findings with Adalytics, said, 'Adalytics advertises in small, muted, auto-playing videos alongside the main content of the page on websites that do not meet Google's monetization standards. I claimed that violations such as posting were being done.'

The image below is an example of a Google video ad that was actually playing automatically on the website while muted. Companies that displayed video advertisements that did not meet Google's standards ranged from Fortune 500 companies to small and medium-sized enterprises, including advertisements from US government agencies.

If video is the main content platform like YouTube, you can expect many viewers to naturally see the video if you display a video ad before the target video. But most viewers won't even notice when it's played muted on a tiny video player at the edge of the screen.

In some cases, even the existence of the video was not well understood because it was covered with another advertisement. Adalytics reports that some ad campaigns allocated between 42% and 75% of ad spend to external sites and apps that didn't meet Google's standards.

``This is an unacceptable betrayal by YouTube,'' said Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer of advertising agency UM Worldwide. , the client should be fully refunded,' commented. A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which operates the public health insurance system under the United States Department of Health and Human Services, said, ``CMS is concerned about reports of meaningless ad placements by Google.'' said.

Meanwhile, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Google said the Analytics report contained many inaccurate claims and did not reflect Google's efforts to protect advertisers. 'As part of our brand safety efforts, we regularly remove ads from partner sites that violate our policies, and will take appropriate action once a full report has been shared with us,' it said.

And a report released by NewsGuard , which investigates the transparency of online news outlets, finds that websites displaying unreliable AI-generated news are flooded with Google ads to fund publishers. was reported.

Funding the Next Generation of Content Farms - Misinformation Monitor: June 2023 - NewsGuard
https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/june-2023/

Google Is Placing Ads for Top Brands on Spammy, Chatbot-Generated Blogs | PCMag
https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-is-placing-ads-for-top-brands-on-spammy-chatbot-generated-blogs

NewsGuard defines sites that operate with little or no human oversight and publish articles written mostly or entirely by chatbots as 'unreliable AI-generated news websites (UAINs).' is defined as Some of the articles NewsGuard found had error messages like, 'Sorry, I'm an AI language model, so I can't access external links or websites on my own.' that's right.

Some UAINs posted over 1,000 low-quality AI-generated articles a day, including articles about harmful natural health remedies. Online advertising is the source of funding for these websites, and it is reported that more than 90% of the ads placed on UAIN identified by NewsGuard were delivered by Google ads.

Advertisers don't want their ads to appear next to low-quality AI-generated articles, as it will hurt their brand image. NewsGuard pointed out that programmatically-automated advertising systems are funding low-quality, misinformation-laden AI-generated sites and failing to adequately protect a company's brand image.