The Adalytics report, which created a sensation across the globe last week by claiming that approximately 80% of the video ads of many brands served through the “TrueView” system of YouTube amounts to invalid traffic as per Google’s own definition, has also described in detail how has Google shared different documents at different places about terms of TrueView system that mislead advertisers.

Such is the impact of the report that advertisers across the world are seeking a refund from Google on account of ad waste. It is noteworthy that most advertisers spend almost half of their video ad spend on YouTube TrueView ads. YouTube’s ad revenue was nearly $30 billion in FY22.

e4m covered the major findings of the report on Friday, https://www.exchange4media.com/digital-news/billions-at-stake-as-googles-video-ad-business-comes-under-scanner-128303.html. The comprehensive report dissects YouTube's ad business and its fineprints that have been a cause of concern among media buyers for a long time though they avoided discussing it publicly.

TrueView ads are supposed to play “in-stream” that is within YouTube or through high-quality publisher websites and mobile apps. The Adalytics study has found “muted” TrueView ads being displayed “out-stream” at the background or corner of Google Video Partners (GVP) sites.  sites, some of which were poor quality sites and apps, or currently unlisted or hosted in sanctioned countries like Iran and Russia.

Out-stream or in-stream

The study points out loopholes in the TrueView ads service terms, especially with regards to serving ads on GVP sites.

In one documentation, Google states that TrueView ads will appear before, during or after YouTube videos, with no reference to ads which appear on partner websites, claims Adalytics.

Another Google document states, “Your video ad plays before, during, or after other videos alongside other videos on YouTube and partner sites and apps, without reference to whether or not those other videos on partner sites will be YouTube videos or non-YouTube videos.”

Different billing documents

The report also highlights different documentations about billing strategies for in-stream TrueView ads.

“One page states in Google’s online documentation that you pay when a viewer watches your full video or engages with your video, whichever comes first. This page only makes references to the Cost-per-view (CPV) billing model.”

However another page about “skippable in-stream ads” lists four billing strategies-Cost-per-view (CPV), Target cost-per-action (CPA), Maximize conversions bidding, and Target cost-per-thousand impressions (tCPM).

GVPs opted-in by default

Since July 2019, certain types of TrueView ad campaigns are opted-in to GVP by default. If media buyers wish to have their video ad served on YouTube.com and the YouTube mobile apps only, they must opt-out of GVP sites and apps.

However, in certain cases, media buyers don’t have the option of opting out of GVP sites and apps, claims the study.

Third party audit not independent one?

The questions raised by the Adalytics' report are being considered as serious in the advertising industry across the world.

“The charges made in the Adalytics report are serious in nature and will dent Google’s ad business. The adtech giant must address these allegations by announcing a third party audit soon”, Indian advertisers say.

Interestingly, the study points out that Google does have a “ third-party ad verification on YouTube” but it is not an independent one.

“Google does not accept third-party tracking pixels for YouTube measurement. YouTube does have a YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP), which includes ad verification companies like Integral Ad Science (IAS) and DoubleVerify. However, it appears that these measurement partners have to rely on aggregated, server-to-server data transfers - via the YouTube data feed in order to execute their “independent” measurement analytics,” the report alleges.

Google’s response

An email sent to the Google India team didn’t elicit any response till the time of filing this story. Last week, when e4m reached out to the team for their comments on the Adalytics report, the team had shared a blog post of  Google’s director of global video solutions, Marvin Renaud.

Insisting that advertisers have full control over ads display, Renaud explained, “When advertisers create video ad campaigns, they can clearly see that their ads may run on third-party sites via GVP during the campaign setup. We offer the option to opt out at any time. They can also decide where their content may appear. Advertisers can exclude specific websites and URLs along with entire topics or apps they wish to avoid when running ads.”

He further adds, “Ad inventory across the Google Video Partner network is more than 90% viewable. This is well above industry norms. The claims in the third-party report simply aren’t right. Put simply, over 90% of ads on GVP are visible to people across the web — and advertisers are only paying for ads when they are viewed.”

He also added that Google monitors adherence to its policies, and last year stopped serving ads on over 143,000 websites found to be in violation.

However, his blog didn’t address the concerns with regards to billing and third party audit.

Invalid traffic is a known fact: advertisers

Many marketers e4m spoke to said that invalid traffic is well-known in the digital ecosystem.

Sharing her past experience, Piali Dasgupta, Senior Vice President - Marketing, Columbia Pacific Communities, says, “We haven’t seen any major discrepancy, in terms of placement of ads. However, for a brand campaign done for Christmas last year, we saw that 5% of the ad inventory were placed on irrelevant partner websites and apps such as VPN Apps, Keep Junk Remover, cargames.com etc that were not aligned with our audience targeting filters.”

“Given that Youtube doesn’t give advertisers an option to choose how much of the inventory will be used on partner websites and how much on the platform, it would be wise to limit ad spends on Youtube for the time being, till Google addresses the concern with a clarification,” says Dasgupta.

She adds that alternately, brands could continue to invest in the platform by doing non-skippable ads which are within 15 seconds. However, this ad format is obviously more expensive and the click through rates on these ads are quite poor. So, these are ideal for top of the funnel marketing objectives such as brand awareness.

The premium players mislead marketers about the viewership of video-ads running on third party websites and apps. There is a lot of policy breach and breach of trust between the brand/ companies and the premium publishers, says Dr. Vikas Katoch, Founder and CEO of Adomantra Digital.

He advised, “It is high time that brands and marketers think beyond the Youtube and Facebook ecosystem and trust other publishers for ad view business. There is a lack of understanding amongst marketers, where they only opt for the premium top publishers, thinking that it will lead to the large targeted consumer outreach and successful digital ad campaigns.”

Brands should now look beyond the premium publishers and go for companies which have good market reputation and can create transparency in charging for clicks, impressions,  conversions, depending on the type of campaign they run, he opined.

Sachin Kumar, Founder of Bottleopeners insists that Google has always given him the return on investment.

“We have never faced any issue. Tech glitches are always possible and a small fraction of digital ads often land up in invalid traffic which is not easy to eliminate but surely can be compensated,” Kumar said.