Google is no stranger to scandal.
Its scandal du jour, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, is brought to you by Adalytics, an advertising analytics firm that published a meticulously researched report earlier this week demonstrating that the majority of YouTube ad campaigns – around 80% – allegedly run not on YouTube proper but rather on low-quality third-party sites in YouTube’s version of an audience network.
Google denies this, etcetera, etcetera. You can read the full Adalytics report (it’s 162 pages, but worth it!) as well as Google’s rebuttal blog post to draw your own conclusions.
The heat is on
Most of the news coverage of the Adalytics findings and follow-ups to the Journal’s report have focused on Google’s alleged violation of its own promise that its proprietary TrueView ad units are always skippable, audible and served in vetted environments.
It makes sense that this is what caught the attention of most people. We’re talking about potentially billions in allegedly misspent ad dollars. 😮
Some of the affected advertisers even include government agencies and politicians in the US and in Europe, such as political ad campaigns for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and ads paid for by Medicare and the European Parliament – and they’re ticked.
Adalytics found examples of TrueView ads running on sites and apps hosted and/or developed in sanctioned countries, including Iran and Russia.
Regulators are well aware of the report and they’re stirring themselves to action.
For example, AdExchanger has seen a draft of a letter – not yet reported or published – from Dutch MEP Paul Tang addressed to Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, calling for the parliament to reallocate its ad budgets and campaigns to “trustworthy and uncluttered advertising methods and outlets,” to suspend all current advertising running through any of Alphabet’s services and to demand refunds following an audit if it’s found that Google “misled” parliament in any way.
Tang plans to send the letter to President Metsola on Tuesday.
This is explosive stuff.
But there is another issue here that isn’t getting much play, which is that the alleged independent third-party ad verification on YouTube and across its network does not actually meet the standards any rational being would have for “independent” or “verification.”
GVP, who?
In the wake of the Adalytics report, many ad buyers appeared surprised to learn of the existence of YouTube’s audience network, which is called Google Video Partners (GVP). (Even Ari Paparo didn’t know about it.)
To be fair, Google does make multiple references to GVP in its technical online documentation. But AdExchanger spoke with sources who said GVP isn’t mentioned in Google’s sales materials.
But riddle me this: Wouldn’t the campaign reporting for TrueView placements, including across Google Video Partners, as shared by certified third-party verification companies in the YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP), have tipped off advertisers that at least some of their TrueView spots were running not on YouTube’s own site and app?
That is a trick question because, until very recently, companies in the YouTube Measurement Program, including DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS) had no visibility into any of the TrueView ads running on the open web.
AdExchanger has learned that IAS is working on a media quality product specifically for GVP in partnership with Google, but the tool is still in beta as of late May and wasn’t even a glimmer in an engineer’s eye in 2020, which is how far back the Adalytics report goes.
At a remove
Yet even when IAS eventually releases its GVP verification product (and perhaps other verification providers will follow suit with offerings of their own), that won’t change the reality that none of the companies in the YouTube Measurement Program has access to YouTube ad data.
And that is because Google doesn’t accept independent third-party tracking pixels or tags on YouTube inventory.
Instead, Google shares data with its measurement partners through a server-to-server setup, and these providers have no way to directly monitor YouTube ad serving environments.
The argument is that this arrangement helps with privacy protection and data security.
But considering recent revelations “and the major issues on GVP extension, advertisers should not accept this and push for the independent ability to govern their activity,” said Ruben Schreurs, chief product officer at Ebiquity. “Google saying, ‘Trust us, we’ll make sure it’s all safe and sound,’ has been proven to be inadequate.”
Speaking of Google’s assertions, the company says in its response to the report that YouTube does indeed offer third-party validation for ads running on GPV content.
“We partner with outside organizations to help us ensure publishers are complying with our policies,” Marvin Renaud, director of Global Video Solutions, wrote in Google’s reaction post. “Google Video Partners supports independent, third-party verification from DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science and Moat for viewability and invalid traffic.”
Yet multiple sources with knowledge of the YouTube verification service told AdExchanger that any overture toward GVP measurement is only a very recent phenomenon.
Google’s statement also doesn’t address the fact that third-party partners get their data from Google through a server-to-server data transfer and not directly.
Mic drops
These revelations are jarring but not overly surprising, at least not to the self-described “jaded” and “cynical” ad agency and ad tech executives I spent most of Wednesday speaking with after the Adalytics report came out.
But it’s their clients’ money, so I’ll let them have the last word.
As one top-level executive at a well-known agency put it, speaking on condition of anonymity so as to be unfiltered:
“These partners are getting what Google decides to share with them, which to me means that YTMP is effectively a charade to make YouTube look good.”
Another agency executive expressed a similar sentiment:
“The measurement program is a band-aid, and the same could be said of Media Rating Council, because the value they provide is not sufficient. Clients are willing to spend a small percentage of their ad budget to feel better and be able to tell their CEO that ‘it wasn’t my fault’ when shit hits the fan.”
But I reserved the zingiest zinger for last, via a senior media agency executive quoted in the Adalytics report:
“[Third-party verification] vendors are either incompetent or intentionally fraudulent and, worse, seem complicit with Google in a deliberate scheme to exploit advertisers and the industry via a deceptive ‘verified partner program.’”
Well then. 🖐️ 🎤
DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science did not respond in time for publication. Google declined to comment beyond its blog post.
Correction: A previous version of this article intimated that Moat is a member of the YTMP, which is not the case.
Follow Allison Schiff (@OSchiffey) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter, for as long as Twitter lasts.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
