Meta and YouTube Secretly Targeted Children in Ads

It’s highly controversial for social media platforms to run ads targeting people under the age of 18, and Meta and YouTube’s own rules prohibit ads targeting this group. Although this is a ban on paper, it turns out that both social media giants are circumventing their own rules in practice.

According to the Financial Times, both companies’ advertising categories include: “unknown” There is a group tagged as. It is stated that the ages, gender, parental status or household income of the users in this category cannot be determined. On the other hand, according to the news, this is just advertisements aimed at young people It’s nothing more than a cover so it can be targeted. Additionally, advertisers who choose this category “to a significantly wider audience” It is stated that it has been reached.

The reason for this situation is that they do not want to lose young people.

Owned by US-based advertising giant Publicis Spark FoundryHe stated that he worked with these companies to launch the illegal marketing campaign in Kanda between February and April, and then launched the program in the USA in May 2024. The reason for this method, which Meta plans to spread to platforms other than Instagram and Google plans to open globally, is that young people TikTok It had turned to competing services such as.

Google has now launched an investigation into these claims and the ad campaigns have also been cancelled. In the statement made by the company, “We prohibit personalized advertising to anyone under 18, period. “We will take additional steps to reinforce to our sales representatives that they should not help advertisers or agencies try to get around our policies.” expressions were used.