Google Display Network ad on X — A Win-Win with an Asterisk of Brand Safety Concerns

Recently, a Google Display Network ad was found running on X. It wasn't surprising, but it was unexpected, especially for the company running the ads on GDN! Around a year after the announcement, GDN ads are now live on X. Marketers might find this exciting, but there are a few concerns.

The Google Display Network ad on X

Since Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X, the public's perception of the social media platform has been in a state of flux, similar to his. According to Elon Musk and the platform's CEO, it has 500-600 million monthly active users. Despite that, the company has been struggling with revenue. According to the media, revenue was down 59%.

It's mostly because of growing concerns about hate speech, platform manipulation, and impersonation. Last year, the X switched to programmatic ad trading from its proprietary online ad manager to reverse the decline. Since May last year, Inmobi has been offering advertisers the chance to buy inventory on X. Google is also part of the InMobi network.

The GDN contributes a lot to Google's revenue, along with search and YouTube advertising. Across the Internet, this network serves ads on 2 million sites, videos, and apps. With X joining the GDN, Google gets access to yet another ad platform, increasing revenue potential. On the other hand, X has a ton of data on its users, including their interests, behaviors, demographics, and more. Although the details of the partnership aren't revealed, it's safe to assume Google will use the data for better ad targeting. The Google Display Network ad on X gets an influx of advertisers without hiring more sales or customer service people. This is a win-win for both platforms.

raises questions about overall user experience,

Although this partnership could be beneficial for both platforms, what does it mean for social media users? Whenever such news announcements are made, the conversation is centered around the business side and ignores the user perspective. It's a mixed bag from a user's perspective. There’s good news and bad news. With Google's advanced targeting capabilities, users can see ads that are relevant to their interests, behaviors, demographics, and other factors. The user experience can be improved by reducing the amount of irrelevant ads. Furthermore, GDN ads support multiple content formats for ad placement, which could improve the overall experience.

It's likely this partnership would increase ad frequency, which could clutter social media usage even if it's relevant. The partnership between X and Google means Google will have access to X's rich user data. There might be privacy concerns about how much data Google and X will have access to.

and more advantages for marketers,

X's high-quality inventory, such as premium ad placements and video ads, would provide marketers with better reach and better targeting through the GDN.

Performance Max integration with GDN could make creating and managing ads easier. Streamlining workflows could be possible for advertisers by managing both platforms from one interface.

Also, advertisers can get detailed insights into the performance of their campaigns with Google's analytics tools. Then they can track key metrics, identify areas for improvement, and optimize their spending. For marketers, this is a big deal since X's attribution and reporting tools have been lacking.

which comes with an asterisk.

In its announcement last year, Google clearly said marketers could choose whether their ads were served on X or not. Considering Elon Musk's moderation policies that have led to sharing of potentially harmful content that could be offensive to certain brands, this doesn't surprise me. Brand safety has become an issue on the platform because of its policies. There's been a lot of talk about brands and marketers being worried that their ads might appear next to controversial or explicit content on X. Given X's bot problem, which its CEO claims to have under control on her blog, and questionable accounts with blue tick, it also increases invalid traffic exposure. According to Lunio.ai, X generated about 24% invalid traffic through paid ads, compared to 7.3% for GDN.

Those are some reasons why this announcement didn't create a lot of buzz. In fact, even the most recent media report about finding a GDN ad on X was underpinned by lack of enthusiasm. The company whose ad was found on X wasn't aware of it. The team didn't remember they had an X account!

Nevertheless, there's a loyal Twitter or X user base, which the company claims is growing. No matter how you slice it, it's still relevant. However, it's gradually moving out of marketers' media plans due to controversies around potentially harmful content and the mushroom growth of questionable accounts with blue ticks. Of course, Elon Musk has been contesting this openly and talking about how they're working on it. Then there's the issue of invalid traffic from paid ads that may waste ad dollars.

A media article even went on to raise the question of whether this partnership actually represented an indirect financial support that Google was offering to Musk's philosophies and views? Such views are very damaging to the platform's reputation. No wonder such conversations have led to an asterisk on its reliability and effectiveness as a platform from a marketing perspective. Due to such brand safety concerns, Google might have said that users can opt out of X when using GDN for ad placements. Overall, I think this is a good move for X and Google, and a little bit for users and marketers. However, I think removing that asterisk of brand safety concerns is important.