This year, the Bank of Montreal wanted to solicit people interested in a credit card. BMO’s advertising agency has launched a campaign on YouTube using Google’s artificial intelligence software that targets ideal customers.
But Google, which owns YouTube, also ran the ad on Kids Diana Show, a YouTube channel for preschoolers whose videos have been viewed more than 94 billion times.
Someone clicked on the ad leading to BMO’s website, which tagged the user’s browser in tracking software from Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies. This is revealed by a study by Adalytics, which analyzes advertising campaigns for brands.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires children’s web services to obtain parental consent before collecting personal data from children under 13 for purposes such as targeted advertising.
This study revives concerns about YouTube ads in children’s content. In 2019, YouTube and Google paid a record $170 million fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New York State lawsuit. They were accused of illegally collecting personal information from minors watching children’s channels and then using that data to target those children with advertising.
YouTube then announced limits on its collection of personal data and the end of personalized ads in children’s videos.
On Thursday, two US senators asked the FTC to investigate possible COPPA violations by Google and YouTube (citing Adalytics and a New York Times article): Children may have been tracked and targeted by ads, without parental consent , hence the “widespread collection and dissemination” of data related to children, worry Democrat Edward Markey and Republican Marsha Blackburn.
“These actions of YouTube and Google are estimated to have affected hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children in the United States,” the senators wrote.
Adalytics identified more than 300 ads for adult products, such as cars, in nearly 100 YouTube videos categorized as “kids” and linking to advertiser sites. The study also reports YouTube ads with violent content (explosions, sniper rifles, car crashes, etc.) on children’s channels.
This month, The Times did an analysis: When you click on ads from some YouTube kids’ channels (without logging in), you’re redirected to the advertisers’ websites. These sites then place on the user’s browser tracers – codes used for security, advertising tracking or profiling purposes – from Amazon, Facebook (Meta), Google and Microsoft, among others.
Before publishing this article, the Times showed Google some of the research from Adalytics: the study’s findings are “deeply flawed and misleading,” said Michael Aciman, Google spokesperson. Google also challenged an earlier study by Adalytics of its advertising practices, first cited by The Wall Street Journal.
Google told The Times that running adult ads in children’s videos is helpful: Parents who watch them can become customers. Additionally, showing violent ads in children’s videos is against its policies, Google says; YouTube has “reclassified” the violent ads cited by Adalytics so that they no longer appear in children’s content.
Google claims that it does not serve personalized ads in children’s videos and that its advertising practices comply with COPPA. Ads in kids’ videos are based on web page content, not user profile, says Google, adding it doesn’t tell advertisers or tracking services that a viewer from YouTube has watched a children’s video, only that he watched YouTube and clicked on the ad.
According to the company, this type of data collection could occur when a user clicks on an advertisement on any website.
But advertising veterans say they’ve had trouble keeping their clients’ ads on YouTube from appearing in children’s videos, according to recent Times interviews with 10 senior ad agency executives. and related businesses. According to them, the placement of ads on YouTube has put major brands at risk of compromising the privacy of children.
“It concerns me incredibly,” said Arielle Garcia, chief privacy officer at UM Worldwide, the advertising agency that led the Bank of Montreal campaign.
Garcia said she was speaking generally and could not comment on the BMO campaign. “It shouldn’t be so difficult to ensure that children’s data is not collected and used inappropriately,” she says.
Google says it offers brands a one-click option to exclude their ads from YouTube videos aimed at children.
BMO’s campaign had targeted ads using Performance Max, a specialized artificial intelligence tool from Google that doesn’t tell companies the exact videos on which their ads appeared. Google said the ads didn’t initially exclude videos aimed at children, and the company recently helped the campaign update its settings.
In August, an ad for another BMO credit card appeared on a video from the Moolt Kids Toons Happy Bear channel, whose cartoon videos have been viewed more than 600 million times. Google said the second ad campaign doesn’t appear to have excluded children’s videos.
BMO spokesman Jeff Roman said, “BMO does not seek to target minors with its online advertisements and takes steps to prevent its advertisements from being served to minors. »
Many industry veterans have reported issues with Google’s more conventional ad services.
“It’s always starting over,” said Lou Paskalis, a former director of global media at Bank of America, who now runs a marketing consultancy.
A Microsoft spokesperson said, “Our commitment to privacy drives how we design all of our products and services. We obtain more information so that we can carry out any further investigation that may be necessary. Amazon says it prohibits advertisers from collecting data about children using its tools. Meta declined to comment.
Children’s privacy experts have expressed concern that building Google’s integrated ecosystem – which includes the most popular web browser and video platform within the biggest digital advertising – has made it easier for tech giants, advertisers and data brokers to track children online.
They created a vacuum “that picks up kids’ data,” said Jeff Chester, chief executive of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting privacy in the digital realm.