The most recent study from Adalytics is perhaps the most alarming one yet, as it reveals that the Google Search Partner (GSP) platform appears to have no controls in place to ensure users of the service do not see their ads running on all manner of unsuitable sites.
Adalytics found ads appearing next to pornography and on sites on the federal government’s SDN list, which contains tens of thousands of companies, organizations and individuals who have been identified as posing a threat to US national security and foreign and economic policy, according to Wikipedia.
One would reasonably expect that, at a minimum, Google would filter porn sites and those listed by the government as threats to national security out of the core GSP offering. But apparently no such effort has been made, judging by the hundreds of screenshots included in the Adalytics study. This latest lapse of trust raises questions about Google’s stewardship of the dollars that advertisers invest in its services.
Google very clearly states in its terms of service that it does not reveal the vendors in its network, which should at least give advertisers pause about using the service as an extension of their search campaigns beyond Google-owned properties.
The problem, however, is that GSP is set up as an opt-out on each search campaign that a marketer deploys. And based on the findings from the Adalytics study, it appears that many marketers – including a significant number of US government entities such as the FBI, US Treasury and US Army – were unaware they need to opt out to protect themselves from problematic ad placements.
It’s worse if you use Google’s Performance Max, a goal-based tool that allows performance advertisers to access all Google Ads inventory across a single campaign. It’s designed to complement keyword-based search campaigns with access to Google’s other media channels like YouTube, Display, Discovery, Gmail and Maps.
The problem is that Google offers PMax customers no way to opt out of GSP. At best, this is an egregious oversight, particularly for a solution that Google is pushing so aggressively.
By setting up the GSP platform and PMax like this, Google has exposed any search clients who fail to opt out of the service in their search campaigns or who use PMax at all to significant compliance and reputational risk.
The company’s response to concerns over this risk is to characterize GSP as a “minuscule” part of its overall search volume, which is not a viable response to a regulator. And that defense certainly won’t fly in the court of public opinion, where it takes just a single screenshot to ignite public backlash and potential boycotts.
I know many people who work at Google, and they are almost universally high-integrity individuals who work hard on behalf of their customers. GSP and PMax, as they are currently set up, are not representative of the kind of solutions that I’ve come to expect from Google and the leaders I know there. Both offerings are a poor reflection on a company that has enjoyed a very good reputation among media vendors for a long time. This GSP scandal is not their finest hour, and characterizing it as minuscule in scale does not mitigate the enormous reputational risk it could create for any marketer unwise enough to use it.
The good news is that marketers can easily eliminate this risk entirely – if they’re careful.
Every search campaign deployed on Google is set by default to include Google Search Partners. TURN IT OFF when you are building a search campaign on Google. And, unfortunately, the forced inclusion of GSP in PMax means that marketers shouldn’t use that tool either until Google gives marketers the option to exclude GSP from campaigns placed on PMax.
Unfortunately, as I understand it, you have to opt out separately for each individual campaign you mount and for each country that a campaign will run in. That’s actually more work than it might sound like for major multinational marketers who routinely deploy campaigns of a near global magnitude.
However, the risk of having your brand appear as search ads in some of the vilest environments you can imagine justifies any amount of effort to avoid that outcome.
But what frustrates me most about this situation is how easily it can be remedied in a way that will benefit all parties. By taking these three simple steps, Google can make the GSP network safe for all advertisers.
1. GSP should be an opt-in service, not one that requires the marketer to opt out. Google Search and PMax campaigns should not run on GSP unless an advertiser willfully opts in.
2. GSP should offer category-level exclusion options for marketers so that, at a minimum, they can opt out of running ads on categories of sites they deem to be unsuitable (e.g., pornography and sites that appear on the federal government’s SDN lists).
3. GSP should filter vendors on the service for overall brand safety and suitability BEFORE allowing them to become part of the GSP network.
Frankly, these steps should have been taken when Google Search Partners was originally set up. The fact that they weren’t raises questions that need to be answered.
For now, though, I would prefer to see Google fix the problem by taking the actions outlined above and, in so doing, make GSP a safe tool for those who wish to take advantage of it without exposing their brands to reputational risk.
