Targeting Vulnerable Groups with Misinformation through Placement-Based Ads on YouTube


The digital advertising landscape constantly evolves, presenting both opportunities and challenges. Placement-based advertising offers advertisers direct control over the specific videos or web pages where their ads appear and presents a seemingly privacy-conscious alternative to data-driven targeting like behavioral advertising. However, like any powerful tool, it can be misused. Recent research reveals how advertisers can exploit this technique to target vulnerable audiences, specifically children, on YouTube, by placing their ads on children-focused videos. This raises a critical question: can malicious actors weaponize placement-based advertising to spread misinformation, specifically targeting vulnerable individuals susceptible to such content? In this work, we investigate whether placement-based advertising is exploited to spread misinformation online by targeting users who watch misinformation and conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. This abstract presents the earliest stages of our work, including our data collection strategy, which involves implementing a monitoring tool that will analyze advertisements displayed on a curated selection of videos and channels.