We actually caught onto this shortly after they launched their Video Action Campaigns to replace Trueview for Action. Checked the URL report and checked the sites where our ads were playing to find exactly what's described in the article. Our Account Manager wouldn't help us get rid of Off-YT placements and we had to escalate it to his boss and threaten to stop buying YT for performance to finally get a custom solution to exclude that inventory. Google has a pattern of making their ad formats less and less transparent and taking control away from advertisers in order to sell trash GDN / Owned Property inventory, the newest example being P-Max. You can not trust Google as an advertiser.
But oh we have to lay off a lot of people for cost because Elon showed us we don’t need them.<p>What Elon showed is that you can start ignoring regulation because it takes a while to catch up with you.<p>But for Google that is preferable because shareholders beat the law when it’s about your next performance bonus
Surely Google must know that eventually all their shiftiness is going to catch up to them. Perhaps the current execs think they will have disappeared over the horizon before the reckoning day comes. They might be right.