Social media advertising is big business but, as Reweti Kohere explains, it’s not possible for companies to reach tangata whenua in their own reo.

The next time you scroll past an advertisement on your Facebook or Twitter feed, take a few seconds to ponder the NZ$255bn worth of revenue that social media advertising generated globally in 2021. Take another moment to realise that amount is expected to rise to NZ$420bn in four years. Social advertising accounts for a third of all digital advertising spend, and snappy TikToks, Instagram reels and other short-form video ads are driving an increase in sales by tens of billions of dollars. Used by well over half of the world’s 7.8 billion people, social media has become highly monetised. 

Businesses in Aotearoa can capitalise on this global opportunity, but if they want to reach tangata whenua in their own reo, some big tech companies can’t help. Here’s why.

Available languages

Search engine giant Google’s paid online advertising platform, Google Ads, enables people to advertise and promote their products and services when users search relevant keywords. Under its “pay-per-click” model, search results will return paid advertisements from marketers that have targeted and paid for such key terms. Who gets the top spot is determined by the “quality score” of marketers’ ads and their bid amounts, or how much they’re willing to pay for the ad. When users see an ad and click on it, the marketer pays a small fee for that click (thus, pay-per-click).

Marketers can craft their Google ads in a myriad of ways, including targeting potential customers based on the languages they understand. But “language targeting” depends on whether Google supports a particular language. While Māori businesses could target New Zealanders by writing their ads in British English, an available language, they can’t target tangata whenua by using te reo Māori in the ad copy because it isn’t supported. And creating ads in an unsupported language will result in Google rejecting them.

A Google New Zealand spokesperson confirmed it didn’t support te reo Māori advertising, but pointed to other supportive initiatives such as the company’s Māori search engine, and ensuring Māori place names in Google Maps are spelt correctly with macrons. “We’ve worked to ensure the New Zealand government can use Māori words and phrases in their ads in critical moments such as the general election and through the Covid-19 pandemic response,” the spokesperson said.

Who else doesn’t support te reo Māori advertising?

LinkedIn, Microsoft’s business and professional networking service, also doesn’t support advertising in te reo Māori. Its advertising works similarly to Google’s pay-per-click model, and it allows members to use only a list of “supported languages” in any advertising campaign or marketing solution. Te reo Māori isn’t listed as a supported language.

“While it’s not possible to support every language at this time, we’re constantly looking at ways we can help organisations to reach their audiences,” said a LinkedIn spokesperson, who encouraged members to still post in te reo on its social media platform.

Why isn’t te reo Māori available?

Neither Google nor LinkedIn answered as to why te reo Māori wasn’t available. But a Google Ads query hints at two possible reasons – one response explained that Google supports only those languages that are “commercially” helpful. For instance, India has 22 official languages, and anywhere between 450 and 1,700 other languages. Google Ads does support the country’s two major languages, English and Hindi, which are used for business, but it also supports other languages spoken in India, such as Marathi and Telugu. Another response suggested that using Māori words without their tohutō (macrons) could make them acceptable, and said: “Yes, it is less than perfect but it shouldn’t affect how your ads perform.”

What about Meta?

Facebook and Instagram’s owner, Meta, fares better. Nick McDonnell, Meta head of policy for New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, said the company has no language restrictions on advertising products so te reo Māori is available to use. However, while Meta allows users to create ads in multiple languages, and can automatically translate them using machine learning technology, automatic translations for Māori aren’t available so users must still write a separate ad in te reo.

What do robots have to do with translations?

Artificial intelligence is destined to transform many industries and areas of life – and it’s already starting to have an impact on language. Google Translate has existed since 2006 (te reo Māori was introduced in 2013), and the 20-year-old Microsoft Translator also supports te reo Māori. At least since 2018, Meta’s artificial intelligence arm has been developing high-quality machine translation capabilities for most of the world’s languages. In 2021, Meta expanded its data set to cover 200 languages, including te reo Māori, and then recently made its latest translation model, “No Language Left Behind” (NLLB), freely available so others could build on its work. 

The effort is part of Meta’s ambitious plans to create a universal translator, which it views as important for continual business growth. But low-resource language communities view with cynicism the attention that big tech gives them, and local companies are coming to the fore with alternative solutions. Earlier this year, it was revealed Google lacked the right technology to fulfil promises made in a 2017 campaign to improve Māori pronunciation in Google Maps. But since then, the likes of Auckland-based FranklyAI and media outlet Te Hiku Media have stepped up to develop a suite of reo Māori voice recognition tools.

What’s the government’s view?

Māori development and broadcasting and media minister William Jackson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Maniapoto) is calling on big tech to embrace te reo Māori. While the language is being revitalised locally, “it’s not happening internationally, except when our national teams perform haka,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for the big companies like Google and LinkedIn to take up that challenge.”

The government is aiming to have at least one million New Zealanders speak basic-level Māori by 2040, as part of its “Maihi Karauna” Māori revitalisation strategy. Jackson believed businesses would change their policies and practices as a result of the increased proficiency in te reo Māori. Then, he said, perhaps large global technology companies could make similar shifts.