Fossil fuel firms among biggest spenders on Google ads that look like search results
The Guardian
One in five ads served on search results for 78 climate-related terms placed by firms with interests in fossil fuels, research finds.
Fossil fuel companies and firms that work closely with them are among the biggest spenders on ads designed to look like Google search results, in what campaigners say is an example of “endemic greenwashing”. (...)
Advertisers pay for their ads to appear on the search engine when a user queries certain terms. The ads are appealing to businesses because they are very similar in appearance to search results: more than half of users in a 2020 survey reported they could not tell the difference between a paid-for listing and a normal Google result. (...)
However, Shell’s net-zero strategy relies heavily on carbon capture and offsetting, according to a Carbon Brief analysis, which says: “Despite its ‘highly ambitious’ framing … Shell’s vision of a continued role for oil, gas and coal until the end of the century remains essentially the same.” (...)
“Since at least the 1980s in the US, there has been a very concerted effort by public relations agents to help polluting companies develop strategies to ‘go green’ while maintaining business as usual.
“Many of the initiatives companies are taking are very piecemeal and will not amount to any kind of long-term or systemic change.” (...)
The analysis also looked at “snippets”, which are not paid-for but are chosen by Google’s algorithm as the most relevant result. The Guardian found the snippet chosen for “fracking” linked to the website of an oil and gas lobby group, the Independent Petroleum Association of America. (...)
A years-long piece of research by the US Environmental Protection Agency concluded in 2016 that in some cases fracking had harmed drinking water supplies.
Unlike Facebook, Google does not have a publicly accessible ad library, meaning it is difficult to analyse advertising on the platform. (...)
> See also: The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing (The Guardian)
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