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Publicis agency Spark Foundry was involved in the campaign.
Google seems to have a knack for generating revenue, regardless of its actions. Recently, the company has made a series of questionable decisions, including delaying its plan to phase out cookies.
Additionally, Google is currently facing a significant antitrust case in the U.S. for allegedly paying Apple $20 billion to exclude other competitors. Interestingly, Google’s own YouTube channel offers a convenient summary of the issue.
Despite these challenges, Google’s earnings continue to rise. Here are its latest Q2 earnings, converted to U.S. dollars:
- Total Revenues: $84.74 billion
- Google Search & Other: $48.51 billion
- YouTube Ads: $8.66 billion
- Google Network: $7.44 billion
- Google Advertising (Total): $64.62 billion
- Google Subscriptions, Platforms, and Devices: $9.31 billion
- Google Services Total: $73.93 billion
- Google Cloud: $10.35 billion
- Other Bets: $365 million
- Hedging Gains (Losses): $102 million
With such a robust business model, one might expect the company to avoid unnecessary controversies. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case, which might be inevitable given the vast number of employees with little oversight.
According to the Financial Times, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, collaborated with Google on a campaign targeting 13-17-year-olds for Instagram. This campaign appears to have violated both companies’ policies, as they claim not to target children. The campaign, which took place in Canada, was reportedly developed by Publicis media agency Spark Foundry. It’s worth noting the irony of Meta and Facebook, supposed competitors, working together, especially as Facebook tries to attract more young users to compete with TikTok.
The project has now been canceled. Google, in its usual fashion, stated, “We prohibit ads being personalized to people under 18. These policies go well beyond what is required and are supported by technical safeguards. We’ve confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here because no registered YouTube users known to be under 18 were directly targeted by the company.”
While we support free, non-state-regulated media, the behavior of companies like Google and Meta (with Apple always in the background) certainly raises questions.