Google may have accidentally defrauded advertisers of billions

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Up to 75% Google "TrueView" ads, which advertisers pay per view instead of impression, were not as advertised and may be "ad fraud".

 

Media

 

 

Quotes

Quote

Google may have misled... advertisers about the viewership of ads running on third party websites and apps, while charging for them. TrueView is the company’s proprietary video ad product that is displayed not only in YouTube but on third party sites and apps across the internet. Users can skip the ad after five seconds, but an advertiser only gets charged if a user watches 30 seconds – or the length of the ad if under 30 seconds – and if the video is playing audio, and isn’t activated by a user passively scrolling past it on the page. Advertising research organisation Adalytics reported this week that... many advertisers paying for TrueView ads... outside YouTube... might not be getting what they paid for. Many of the TrueView ads did not meet Google’s own guidelines, including some ads that were run in small video players in the corner... of the screen, some which were fully muted, had no actual video content between ads, or ran with little interaction or activation from the user.  The mis-identified advertising had been running since 2020. Google’s... Marvin Renaud, rejected the report’s findings in a blog post on Tuesday, saying it made “extremely inaccurate claims”, stating that advertisers are only paying for ads when they are viewed.

 

My thoughts

Oopsie Daisy. Just a causal mistake. And if it wasn't a mistake, it wasn't Google's fault. And if it was Google's fault, it was only minor occurrences. Only time, and peer review, will determine how bad this will actually turn out for Google. Although, knowing companies, I'm sure they'll try to wiggle out of it using some portion of the contract. It seems the stability of the modern internet is finally crashing back down to what it used to be. Who knows what things will be like in 10 years.

 

Sources

Google Blog

The Register

The Guardian (quote source)

New York Post

Adalytics Report

[williamcll]

It would be funny if Google refuses to do anything and just shuts down services where they get sued at.

[Kisai]

"Accidentally" , pfft. It was on purpose, because the people they hired to vet the sites were bait-and-switched.

 

And if you believe this doesn't happen, I have a bridge in New York to sell you.

 

At best, third party sites, put the ad units where they were supposed to be when the google rep vetted the site, and then they changed it. You see this every time you see a "Video ad" in the margin or the corner of a website. There is an underlying script just cycling ads as fast as possible. This is why so many sites have become completely unusable. 

 

At worst, the people at Google didn't care, or were not allowed to care, which is an attitude I've seen from large American companies, where people go "above my pay grade" and just ignore things they have the means to fix or refer to the right people, but don't want to do the metaphorical paperwork.

 

[Quackers101]

"sorry it was unmanageable so it was put into other categories."

but isn't it all a scam, can we have something better than ads in the future?

[Zodiark1593]

And I thought accidentally breaking several hundred dollars of vials yesterday was a pretty bad mistake. Least I didn’t accidentally torpedo a substantial revenue stream for the internet. 

[LloydLynx]

I really wanna see the electronic world burn to the ground but I also don't wanna watch people like Youtubers suffer from it. 

[r00tb33r]

A happy accident, eh?

[Mark Kaine]

"accidentally"