Is there evidence of behaviorally targeted / “personalized” ads serving on “made for kids” YouTube channels?

Our friends at Adalytics have undertaken a comprehensive analysis looking at the targeting of YouTube campaigns to kids.

There are numerous ways in which digital ads can be targeted on YouTube. This includes “contextual targeting” and “audience targeting”.

In Google’s documentation on “How audience targeting works”, it says:

“audiences are made up of segments, or groups of people with specific interests, intents, and demographic information, as estimated by Google. When adding an audience to a campaign or ad group, you can select from a wide range of segments. For example, these segments could include fans of sport and travel, people shopping for cars, or specific people that have visited your website or app. Google Ads will show ads to people who are likely in the selected categories. Users are allocated into audience categories for targeting on third-party websites and apps based primarily on their activity on third-party websites and apps. Users are allocated into audience categories for targeting on Google’s own products based primarily on their activity on these products.”

When advertisers pay for ads to be served with “audience targeting” data, they get access to “Audience reporting” in their Google Ads dashboards. This includes “Reports on how well you are targeting groups of people with specific interests and intents.” One example of audience segments is “affinity segments”, which include “targeting based on people’s interests and habits.”

YouTube’s CEO wrote in 2019 that the platform:

• “will also stop serving personalized ads on [made for kids] content entirely”

• “will treat data from anyone watching children’s content on YouTube as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user”

However, multiple media buyers shared Google Ads campaign reports with Adalytics that raise questions about the YouTube CEO’s commitments.

Please enter your details below and we will send you the full article which includes 4 detailed ad campaign analysis.