When Google changed its ad rules, Charities paid the price

In July 2023, Google said it will no longer restrict advertisers from using other organizations’ brands.

This change is quickly becoming a headache for nonprofits that buy Google search ads to find donors. Other outfits, they found, were using their trademarks to attract Internet traffic.

Samaritan’s Purse, a nonprofit organization that helps victims of natural disasters, has discovered a new competition in the split-second auction that determines which ads appear in Google search results. Children’s Research Hospital St. Jude has been competing with obscure search engines wanting to bring more users to their website. And misleading ads for UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have increased in Google search results, according to data from SpyFu and Semrush, a website two monitor digital ads.

The pattern showed the impact of Google’s policy changes and the potential impact of unclear changes in advertising rules on groups dependent on the world’s largest search engine. In this case, private companies were forced to compete with companies that could afford Google’s advertising costs.

The dispute also cuts to the heart of concerns from regulators around the world that Google has grown too powerful. The company was accused of an illegal research monopoly last year. In August, a federal judge will decide what changes must be made to promote a more competitive search market. In another case, a federal judge is expected to rule soon whether Google violated antitrust laws with its monopoly on ad technology, the kinds of tools that place ads across the web.

Google said it made the trademark policy change as part of its efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Services Act, a broad set of laws that require tech companies to comply with their platform is more powerful and will stop ads that target users based on their identity.

A Google spokeswoman said competing search engines are allowed to run ads that drive users to their sites, but the ads can’t be misleading or deceptive.

“To ensure clarity for users, all search ads must be prominently marked, display the advertiser’s website, and must indicate whether they lead to other search engines,” said the spokesperson.

Whenever someone searches for something on Google, Google runs an automatic ad auction. Advertisers create ads in advance and give Google parameters about their bids and budgets, as well as the types of searches they want to appear on.

The Google system looks for relevant ads and decides whether to place one of them in the search results. The algorithm selects winning ads and determines their ranking based on factors such as bid price, competition with other advertisers and the quality and relevance of the ad.

Before Google’s policy change, only product sellers and information pages (such as product review sites) could use third-party trademarked brand names to promote their products. themselves, if they provide the services they say and are transparent.

With the update, Google search competitors can do the same. Google’s changes to its brand advertising rules led to more ads coming from smaller search engines, including Ask.com and Info.com, the data showed. from SpyFu and Semrush. More competition and more efficient bidding means higher ad costs, which is a particular problem for nonprofits. (Ad price may also vary depending on ad quality.)

Dozens of sites, including Info.com and Ask sites called Find Results Now and Quickly Seek, have bid against nonprofits to appear on search results pages. Google. The ad headline may have tricked users into thinking they are clicking on the nonprofit’s official website, although the smaller type below often says users can search for the charity on its website. (Google specifies that its ads “must make it clear whether the advertiser is a retailer or a news site.”)

“Samaritan’s Purse Donation — Visit Our Site,” says an ad from Discover Results Fast, Ask’s niche search site. When users clicked on the link, they were taken to search results from the Ask Media Group platform rather than the charity’s website.

When Samaritan’s Purse learned that there were other sites competing to advertise on Google, it said it tried to reach out to some of them to resolve the issue. But the nonprofit said it had not been reached by Ask or Info.com, and declined further comment.

“We are aware that other organizations are bidding against us on Google ads,” a Samaritan’s Purse spokesperson said in a statement. “Our Google ad management team has been in contact with these organizations.”

In July 2023, posting a search result, Ask forum, said “Amnesty International website — only here.” The nonprofit’s website was never there. Below the link was an offer “Search here now!” according to the ad text, which was recorded by Semrush.

In December 2023, my inquiry page called Look Up Smart used a common misspelling of St. Jude, a famous children’s hospital, in the commercial. “Gift to Saint Jude | Visit our site,” said the site in a Google ad hosted by Semrush, without the fine print indicating that the user was taken to a search page.

Until 2024, the Ask platform and other websites continued to serve Google ads related to Samaritan’s Purse.

Ask Media Group and System1, the parent company of Info.com, both said they relied on automated tools to create ads, select bids and decide what types of searches it appears. Ask said it used Google’s tools for these functions, while System1 said it uses internal and Google technology.

A spokesperson for Ask Media Group said there was no plan “to grow at the expense of the charity.” Nonprofits represent less than 0.001 percent of Google’s ads, a spokeswoman said, and data on ad prices does not indicate that the “very limited ads on these areas have had a “systematic negative effect” on private ad prices. Charities can ask the company to stop using its name in advertising, the Ask Media representative added.

Most of the time, the nonprofits kept the first ad in the search results when users searched for their name, but they had to pay more money to Google for that privilege. this, said five people who work for the famous United States and international non-profit organizations, who asked. remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from Google.

A Google spokesperson said the company has given away more than $17 billion in free advertising since 2003. Amnesty International, St. Jude and more than a dozen other nonprofits declined to comment for this story.

Last fall, when the remnants of a hurricane ravaged parts of North Carolina, nonprofits including Samaritan’s Purse, Americares and Convoy of Hope, trying to collect donations to help the victims. Info.com has run competing ads, such as Ask Media Group under its Search Online Info and Info to Discover platforms.

System1 said its Info.com company had no intention of advertising against Samaritan Purse, and would stop any advertising that may have inadvertently increased the group’s prices. The company added that it follows Google’s brand rules and policies, and that the incident does not reflect its broader business practices.

These types of ads continued until December. On December 30th, Discover Results Fast was the third most popular link when users googled Samaritan’s Purse.

Nonprofits focused on hurricane relief efforts, conservation and medical research and healthcare advertising said they had to pay Google more than ads since Google rebranded.

In the last two days of 2023, a major charity, which asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, paid Google $200,000 to advertise, double what it paid for on the same day in 2022, before the changes were implemented, two people familiar with the matter said. with advertising. The group blew its budget and had to stop advertising on its biggest fundraising day of the year, December 31. As a result, people say, they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

Other nonprofits may lose revenue from donors who never come to their website after being activated on the Ask site, said Arielle Garcia, director of fundraising at on Check My Ads, an online ad monitor.

The change in Google’s policy is “one of the sneaky little ways they can save money on their product,” Ms. Garcia said.