YouTube’s advertising practices have drawn the ire of some media investors, who claim a lack of transparency over advertising returns could mean as much as 30 per cent of their spend is wasted.
Google uses tracking and data points to serve up relevant targeted advertising to users. However, multiple media buying executives warn that many users are being served ads entirely irrelevant to their interests or the content they view on YouTube. In the television industry, by contrast, OzTam oversees daily ratings and channel performance, GfK delivers eight yearly surveys for the radio industry and Roy Morgan delivers reports for the publishing industries , for example.
Extreme examples included a Defence Force recruitment campaign shown alongside content sympathetic to terror organisation Islamic State, according to an employee working on the account at the time. “We actively monitor the Google Video Partners network, and when Google determines an impression is invalid we do not charge the advertiser.”