Google Violated Its Standards in Ad Deals, Research Finds

Google violated its promised standards when placing video ads on other websites, according to new research that raises questions about the transparency of the tech giant's online-ad business. From a report: Google's YouTube runs ads on its own site and app. But the company also brokers the placement of video ads on other sites across the web through a program called Google Video Partners. Google charges a premium, promising that the ads it places will run on high-quality sites, before the page's main video content, with the audio on, and that brands will only pay for ads that aren't skipped.

Google violates those standards about 80% of the time, according to research from Adalytics, a company that helps brands analyze where their ads appear online. The firm accused the company of placing ads in small, muted, automatically-played videos off to the side of a page's main content, on sites that don't meet Google's standards for monetization, among other violations. Adalytics compiled its data by observing campaigns from more than 1,100 brands that got billions of ad impressions between 2020 and 2023. The company shared its findings with The Wall Street Journal. In a statement, Google said the report "makes many claims that are inaccurate and doesn't reflect how we keep advertisers safe."

To be fair

[Opportunist]

Placing ads out of sight and mind is the only way to keep users from installing adblockers.

Re:

[Firethorn]

Indeed. I have to point out that by the summary, these are the worst sorts of ads. The type that had me installing ad blocking way back in the day, and if that didn't work, avoiding that website entirely.

Consider the "before main video content" and "minimized, muted, in a corner" - that indicates to me that the video ads ARE NOT restricted to youtube type sites where video is the point. But I could rock up to a mainly text website and get video ads from google. And hell, even when I'm willing to sit thr

m0n0p0ly

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

If only there were an alternative.

Google being evil...

[Baron_Yam]

At least this time they're being evil in our favour.

Seems to track..

[Vegan Cyclist]

I take a quick scan of the Google News app on my tablet every night, and many of the stories they link to seem packed with video ads, which I either have to close, or ignore. Have never actually watched one (over several years).

Yet I'm sure all those advertisers are paying a premium for that.

You'd think a smart advertising entity would want to utilize ad styles that THEY THEMSELVES would want to see. But no, it's still these obnoxious interferences that many of us block or ignore. But hey, Google's still ge

Re:

[Firethorn]

Even more fun, there are multiple "malwares" that will load and never display ads, merely generating hits so the sites involved are paid for the ads.

Everyone does what he can get away with.

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

This is the whole of the law.

Everyone is a hypocrite, including those calling other people out for being hypocrites. I just don't even care about hypocrisy anymore. It's all background noise to me.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Hypocrite!

Re:

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

Yeah.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Glad we cleared that one up.

Yours,

A. Hypocrite

Re:

[HiThere]

Well, you've told me who *you* are. Asserting that everyone is like you, however, is a bit over the top.

...and no one admits it.

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

I see what I see.

Prove it then

[S_Stout]

Both sides should submit all the evidence they have and we will decide who is lying.

if only there were ways to block ads

[dhizzle]

PiHole/ Privoxy/ Firefox with EFF Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin.

Struggling to care

[liqu1d]

On one hand an ad not muted would make me leave the page(or at least block ads on future visits). On the other sites arenâ(TM)t free a single video ad thatâ(TM)s muted out of the way is fine with me.