NEW investigation & 🧵: Google runs the world’s biggest ad network, but it conceals most of the publishers it works with and where it places billions of ad $$$. We cracked open one of the world's most lucrative black boxes and found piracy, porn, & fraud:
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The Google Display Network places ads on millions of websites and apps in more than 200 countries. It works with huge publishers, solo bloggers, game apps etc. and earned Google $31 billion in 2021. Which sites and apps does Google work with and send $$$ to? Sorry, it’s a secret.
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Google stands alone in its embrace of confidentiality. Data from Jounce Media shows how Google stacks up against competitors. Over 75% of its partners are “confidential,” opening the door to abuses and schemes that steal potentially billions a year from fraud, scams, disinfo.
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We wrote code and scanned millions of sites to uncover Google’s partners and matched 70% of Google IDs to specific domains/apps. We uncovered a large and bafflingly complex system that thwarts attempts to know everyone Google works with and where it’s sending advertisers’ money.
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This matters because:
🎯It's billions of $$ & there's a fraud/scam problem in digital ads. Who's getting paid?
🎯We already revealed Google ads fund global disinfo sites. What else?
🎯Google is shunning an industry transparency standard it helped create
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In response, Google told us publisher confidentiality does not correlate with bad behavior and it uses a variety of measures to protect ad buyers. Google also said the vast majority of ad revenue from its system goes to publishers who do not keep their information confidential.
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If this all sounds abstract, here's an example: last year the site Conservative Beaver published fabricated stories, including that the CEO of Pfizer was arrested and his wife died after taking a COVID vaccine. Google placed ads on the site until being called out by .
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So: Google removed ads from a site that violated its policies & which most advertisers wouldn’t want to appear on.
The problem? The same confidential Google publisher account used for Conservative Beaver is active and earning $ for the same publisher on another political site.
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Google let the owner start a new site and collect ad revenue. It’s like taking away an unsafe driver’s car instead of their license.
And because the publisher’s account info is confidential, advertisers can't see that the new site is run by the person from Conservative Beaver.
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Mark Slapinski was identified as the owner of Conservative Beaver. When contacted, he denied running the site or publishing disinfo. He didn't explain why his current site uses the Conservative Beaver Google publisher ID.
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It isn’t supposed to be this way. Google helped create an industry transparency standard called sellers.json so ad networks could disclose all the publishers they work with and their info. Google's competitors did. But its list was released late and is overwhelmingly confidential
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What else did we find among Google’s confidential publishers? Despite Google banning ads on adult sites, it placed ads on porn sites (considered advertiser poison) and on Female Prison Pals, where inmates share pics and answer NSFW questions such as their fave sexual position.
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We found Google ads on scores of sites with pirated Japanese manga comics and pornographic manga, known as hentai. Google and other ad networks ban ads from appearing on copyright infringing content. Google also bans ads from appearing on hentai. Yet it placed ads on these sites.
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We were shown this Nike ad on a manga site that Google has delisted more than 10,000 URLs from in its search engine due to copyright infringement. Google's own data showed the site had pirated content, yet kept placing ads on it. (Nike did not respond to a request for comment.)
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Nike and millions of other brands rely on Google to help them buy ads. They collectively spend tens of billions on Google’ Display Network. But in part due to confidentiality they have to trust Google to place their ads on brand safe sites and apps. This is what happens.
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The problems with the Display Network run deeper. We previously revealed how it provides revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of health, election and climate disinfo in Europe, Latin America & Africa: propublica.org/article/google
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Google spokesperson Michael Aciman said the company invests in a combination of human oversight, automation and self-serve tools to protect ad buyers and enforce its policies. He said Google is looking into the sites we flagged.
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What else lurks in Google’s black box? It’s too large and opaque to fully know. What’s clear is it funnels ad money to sites that break Google’s rules and can put lives and livelihoods at risk from dangerous disinformation, fraud and scams. Read more:
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Do you have an interesting story to share about Google ads? Want to see if your ads appeared on any of the piracy or porn sites we found? Get in touch! My DMs are open and I can share my Signal info.
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This story is reported with Ruth Talbot, and relies on code written by her and Jeff Kao, as well as data from and others.
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Correction: I meant to shout out for providing data! I tagged the wrong account. He runs Well Known, which is a great free resource I wrote about here:
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