Google has a program called Google Video Partners. In this program Google places a marketer's advertising on third party sites (in other words, not on the primary YouTube site) and guarantees quality placements on quality sites.
Google charges advertisers a premium price for advertising on its Google Video Partners network. While an advertiser might pay $5 per 1,000 completed views on a low quality video network, advertisers can pay 20 times that - $100 per 1,000 completed views - on the Google Video Partners network.
There's just one problem. Google Video Partners is a scam. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, research conducted by Adalytics covering billions of ad placements by over 1,000 brands between 2020 and 2023, showed that 80% of the time Google violated its own standards for Google Video Partners in placing ads on the network.
The 100+ page report on the scandal, written by Adalytics head Dr. Krzysztof Franaszek, was first reported in the Wall Street Journal in the US, and the Financial Times in the UK.
Dr. Franaszek has written several brilliant reports exposing the corruption and incompetence in the adtech and media buying industries. Last year he wrote a report on how billions of ad bids for major brands meant to run on the website of USA Today went to the wrong places with no one - not agencies, not cmo's, not ad verification vendors - noticing a thing.
In 2021 he reported on Google serving ads on Russia-linked websites after the sites were placed on the US sanctions list.
The startling thing about Franaszek's work is that it is being done by an advertising outsider. He is by training a bio-medical researcher with a PhD in computational biology from Cambridge. The question his findings raise is why it takes one person, like Franaszek or like the reporters who cover the ad industry, to uncover the corruption, fraud, and incompetence in our industry while our "leaders" who are supposed to protect advertisers from corruption, and our holding company heads who have thousands of employees and billions in resources, seem to know nothing.
I think the answer is clear. The advertising industry has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Adtech, International. The adtech industry has subverted the integrity of the ad industry with years of fraud, corruption and incompetence. But no one dares challenge them.
We know the corrupting influence that adtech has had - we know it has cost our clients tens of billions; we know it has sullied our reputation; we know the detrimental effect it has had on our children and our political discourse - but we're afraid to say it out loud.
The advertising industry is responsible for stewarding hundreds of billions of our clients' dollars on digital advertising. The Google/YouTube scandal has once again demonstrated that we have no idea what we're doing.
Media directors and media buyers who are supposed to be experts in analyzing the quality of media opportunities are just animatrons who don't know what they are buying, who they are buying it from, where it is running, or what value it has. They have become nothing more than dense tools to feed cash into the programmatic slot machine.
As in all cases where adtech crooks have been uncovered, the uproar over the Google Video Partners racket will soon die down. The agencies will issue their lame excuses about how "we have systems in place..."; marketing officers will issue pathetic "demands" for their money back; the people who are supposed to represent and protect advertisers - the ANA, the 4As - will continue to hide under their desks.
In a few weeks the whole performance art of outrage will evaporate. By this time next year all the feckless weaklings who are issuing indignant PR horseshit today will be back at Cannes sipping rosé on the Google yacht.