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Ads for dozens of nonprofit and government organizations are appearing on misinformation sites through Google's programmatic advertising, according to research from NewsGuard.
In a report for the European Commission, analysts identified 108 programmatic ads from 57 nonprofit and government organizations that appeared on 50 websites found by NewsGuard to spread misinformation. Some were placed next to articles containing false or misleading content, with others displayed elsewhere on the sites, including on the homepage.
In most cases, the organizations concerned had no idea that their ads were being placed on misinformation sites. In one example, an ad for Planned Parenthood appeared alongside an article advancing dangerous abortion misinformation; in another, an ad for the City of New Haven’s vaccination program appeared on an article falsely claiming that Covid-19 vaccines contain toxic spike proteins.
Ads for Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts school in Michigan, appeared on five sites that have spread misinformation - one on an article published by RestoredRepublic.co that claimed former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton 'died at 9:05 pm on Dec. 31 2018' at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay.
Hillsdale College executive director of media relations and communications Emily Stack Davis said the college hadn't been aware of the ads.
"We will review this matter internally and with our advertising partners in an effort to better reflect the audience the college is attempting to reach," she says.
Other affected organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and Franklin University, said they would add the websites to their lists of prohibited sites. Ads were found in nine countries: the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, and New Zealand on platforms such as Google and The Trade Desk, serving hyper-targeted digital ads to online readers through algorithms and auction processes.
More than 70 per cent of the nonprofit and government ads NewsGuard identified — 81 of 108 — were served up by Google.
Many health organizations and U.S. colleges and universities appear to have been affected. Meanwhile, a number of nonprofit groups responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, including those that aid refugees, are helping to fund sites containing Russian disinformation, including the claim that reports about Russian atrocities are hoaxes.
According to an August 2021 report by Comscore and NewsGuard, misinformation sites make $2.6 billion per year from big brands through programmatic advertising.
Google says it's reviewed some of the examples cited in the report and has removed ads from serving from pages where it found content that violated its terms, including content making harmful health claims.
"In recent years, we’ve developed extensive measures to stop ads from appearing next to misinformation on our platform, including policies that cover false claims about elections, climate change denial and claims related to Covid-19 pandemic and other health-related issues," says a spokesperson.
"We’ve also expanded our policies to address harmful content related to the war in Ukraine. We regularly monitor all sites in our publisher network and when we find content that violates our policies we immediately remove ads from serving."
