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Ad buyers have switched up their YouTube strategies after a report rocked the industry late last month, accusing the tech giant of misleading advertisers, sources told Adweek.
Google Video Partner (GVP) inventory is a network of third-party online video that Google says meets high-quality standards. For certain ad formats like Video Action Campaigns, buyers are automatically opted-in to buy GVP inventory alongside YouTube content. (But you can opt out of Video Action Campaigns, Google said).
The report, authored by independent ad-tech research outfit Adalytics, found that when advertisers pay for premium campaigns that include GVP, the third-party inventory did not meet Google’s own standards for these campaigns. As such, ads were silent rather than playing with sound-on, ads were found on tiny out-stream video players in the corner of webpages, and ads ran on publisher sites that failed to meet Google’s quality media standards, due to peddling disinformation and copyright infringements.
By analyzing clients’ ad-buy placement reports and using web archive data, Adalytics found that this kind of unsavory GVP inventory, at times, made up the majority of campaign budgets from Fortune 500 brands.
In response, five ad buyers told Adweek they are taking action to limit their exposure to GVP inventory.
“Since the report, all campaigns that were running on GVP are being reevaluated based on performance against primary KPIs, as well as inventory served on,” said David Mirsky, group director of media at Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, who noted few clients were advertising on GVP inventory prior to the report. “Decisions to pause, or not, are being made on an instant-by-instant basis.”
Buyers redirect away from GVP
A director of media at a large brand said 19% of their YouTube inventory was being spent on GVP inventory, without the brand knowing. The brand is directing its media away from GVP and assessing all YouTube buys, the executive said, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive industry relations.
A buyer at an agency said they are in the process of auditing clients’ exposure to GVP inventory. For one campaign, with a $1 million budget that ran on over 25,000 sites and apps, 33% of impressions were delivered on GVP inventory. The agency is working with Google to turn off GVP for this client.
We turn off GVP, so performance is going to tank
Anonymous media buyer source
Two other agency buying sources said clients were en masse working to eliminate their exposure to GVP. One buyer said that before the Adalytics report, the majority of the agency’s brand advertiser clients were opted-out of GVP placements, while most performance advertisers opted in. Now, nearly all brand clients and half of performance clients are opting out of GVP inventory. The agency is also negotiating with Google to get more granular reporting data.
“It just feels like a bit of bait and switch,” the buyer said.
The buyer backlash comes at a time when Google, a long-dominant force in the advertising industry, is under particular stress. Google laid off 12,000 employees earlier this year after tepid earnings, and the company faces antitrust suits from multiple jurisdictions. Moreover, the company had already rankled buyers with its Performance Max buying tool, which places ads on Google’s vast swath of media properties via AI, causing concern to some who say it lacks transparency.
Google did not respond to a request for comment by press time, though the company did publish a blog post shortly after the Adalytics report came out, calling its claims “extremely inaccurate.” The post said that in the majority of video ad campaigns served on YouTube, GVP inventory enhances campaign performance and is more than 90% viewable, among other rebuttals.
The performance dilemma
But, removing spend from GVP has consequences, and buyers divesting from the third parties YouTube sends their ads to are worried performance will suffer.
“We turn off GVP, so performance is going to tank,” said one of the media buyer sources.
This is partly because GVP inventory cannot be opted out of for certain performance-centric campaign types, like video action campaigns.
A fourth media buyer said that their agency has been monitoring Video Action Campaign buys since YouTube made GVP inventory the default more than a year ago. Throughout, the buyer said GVP inventory has never made up more than single-digit percentages of campaign inventory and has performed comparably or better than YouTube on return on ad spend and cost per acquisition. This buyer’s experience contrasts with the findings of the Adalytics report, where some brand YouTube campaigns had as much as 84% of inventory via GVP.
“GVP for business goals works pretty well,” said the media buyer, who is not altering their YouTube strategy following the Adalytics report.
Other sources said third parties’ supposedly good performance on lower-funnel metrics is misleading. The open internet is filled with so-called made-for-advertising sites, research has found, which are designed to game the kind of metrics campaigns optimize for but actually have very few engaged viewers.
“In theory, a lot of YouTube works, however, this is an area that makes me question whether a media mix model can be gamed by buying tons of impressions for very low CPMs,” the media buyer source said, noting that YouTube often comes up in the top three in a brand’s mixed media model based on return on investment. “By doing so, you inherently make it a math equation that drives a higher level of return, yet no one ever heard the ad that was delivered below the fold and sound off.”
Buyers might be able to figure out what’s driving performance—scammy websites or legitimately good inventory—if the process was more transparent, sources said.
YouTube does provide buyers with a list of where all websites run, but the list includes thousands of domains that are difficult to parse through, and which brand safety vendors usually don’t evaluate, sources said. And there’s less transparency into the ad’s placement, whether in-stream or out-stream, sound on or sound off.
Duplicating buys and media wastage
With the lack of transparency inherent to buying third-party inventory via YouTube, some buyers have always avoided GVP.
“We’ve always had a hypothesis that it’s better to buy open exchange video inventory through programmatic than using GVP,” said George Tarnopolsky, vp of programmatic at Good Apple. “YouTube is treated like a direct publisher.”
Most buyers are already buying open web video inventory, and if GVP is taking up a greater chunk of YouTube buys than a brand anticipated, these efforts could be duplicative.
“You can buy the same exact inventory in DV360,” one media buyer said, referring to the Google-owned demand-side platform. “You’re doubling up where you only want YouTube.”
At least one media buyer is holding onto some GVP inventory in their buys to see if Google makes changes to inventory quality behind the scenes.
“The pressure is on Google to clean up that supply,” the buyer said. “Those that are opting out are doing it out of caution and wanting to hold Google’s feet to the fire.”
The article has been updated to include Google’s response.
