But via Google’s popular AI-driven ad-buying tool Pmax—which advertisers need to opt into—advertisers cannot opt out of the Search Partner Network, the media buyer source told Adweek.
A second media buyer, who also requested anonymity, said since learning of the report’s findings, his company has opted out of the network on its search buys and is exploring pausing spend on Pmax.
“The partner network is an easy opt-out checkbox,” said a third media-buying source. “It would be concerning if the sites in the partner network include unsavory and unsafe content, though. Our best practice is to opt out unless there is a specific scale or targeting rationale.”
The scale of the problem
In response, Google said the scale of Adalytics’ claims is “wildly exaggerated” and points to inaccuracies in the research outfit’s previous two reports.
“The examples shared are from our Programmable Search Engine (ProSE) product (a minuscule part of our Search Partner Network), which is a free search tool we offer to small websites so that they can present a search experience directly on their sites,” said Dan Taylor, vice president of global ads at Google, in a statement. “Ads may appear based on the user’s specific search query; they are not targeted to, or based on, the website they appear on. Websites that merely implement ProSE do not get any ad revenue from those ads.”
Publishers that use ProSE may apply to receive a revenue share of the ads displayed on their search results, but must abide by Google’s terms of service.
However, the examples shared with Google violate the terms of service, spurring Google to disable ProSE on the adult websites, but it wasn’t able to share how many by press time.
Reputational risks
Adalytics observed code that indicates a website is using the Google Search Engine, which would make it part of the Search Partner Network and is eligible for advertising. It used data sources like publisher intelligence firm DeepSee.io and publisher crawler archives gathered primarily between October 2022 and October 2023.
The risk of a blue-chip advertiser funding these unsavory sites is relatively small.
In a separate study of around $1 billion in search media spend from a variety of advertisers, Adalytics found that 5.96% of spend went to the Search Partner Network, according to Adalytics founder Krzysztof Franaszek.
Still, the risk of a search advertiser appearing on a partner website, and therefore perhaps a pornographic or sanctioned one, is higher: Advertisers only have to pay when a user actually clicks. In fact, 16% of search campaign impressions from the sample of over $1 billion in media spend went to Search Partner Network websites, Franaszek said.
