Multiple Google ad buyers have claimed that the company’s sales representative helped them target minors through ads even though the tech giant strictly prohibits targeting children under the age of 18.
The ad buyers stated that the representative asked them to use the company’s “unknown” user category to target underage children through advertisement. This category covers individuals whose age, gender, parental status, and income data are unknown to Google.
This is not the first time that Google is facing the heat for letting advertisers target children despite its own policy.
Previously, the tech giant faced criticism for collaborating with Meta in an ad campaign that targeted children aged 13 to 17 using YouTube through the “unknown” category, despite knowing that most people present in this category are under 18.
Google and Meta are mostly competing for companies’ ad budgets, but this was the rare collaboration to promote Instagram among young users who can otherwise tilt towards Meta’s biggest competitor, TikTok.
Speaking about the situation, Google spokesperson Jacel Booth stated that the company has strict policies against personalizing ads for young people, and the tech firm continues to follow this policy. Booth further stated that the company would take immediate action against the sales representative to ensure that its policies were completely implemented without any circumvention.
One ad buyer was shocked to see the audacity of the Google representative explicitly suggesting him to use the unknown category to target children, while the other recalled that the Google representative reached out to them to recommend building an ad campaign using the unknown category that could be used to target children over 16 with access to disposable income.
Similarly, the third buyer noted that he threatened the Google representative to use the ad budget on Meta, to which the rep asked the buyer to use the unknown category. The Meta has relatively lenient laws against personalized targeting of minors.
The “unknown” category on Google can contain children because they often provide less personal information, leading to incomplete profiles or a lack of identifiable data, which places them in this category. Behavioral patterns that are more common among younger users and the use of shared devices without personalized accounts also increase the likelihood that minors fall into this group.
Children’s privacy is often protected under the federal law Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), according to which companies need parental consent for collecting personal information of children under 13. A more strict law has already been passed by the US Senate, with the House expected to vote soon, which would essentially ban companies from allowing personalized ads on children under 17.
