After a research report last week found that YouTube’s
advertising practices had the potential to undercut the privacy of children
watching children’s videos, the company said it limited the collection of
viewer data and did not serve targeted ads on such videos.
اضافة اعلان
These types of personalized ads, which use data to tailor
marketing to users’ online activities and interests, can be effective for
finding the right consumers. Under a federal privacy law, however, children’s
online services must obtain parental consent before collecting personal
information from users younger than 13 to target them with ads — a commitment
YouTube extended to anyone watching a children’s video.
Now Fairplay, a prominent children’s group, is challenging
the company’s privacy statements. The group said it had used advertising
placement tools from YouTube’s parent company, Google, to run a $10 ad campaign
this month targeted at different groups of adults, exclusively on children’s
video channels.
The ads were shown to users in consumer segments selected by
the children’s group — including motorcycle enthusiasts, high-end computer
aficionados, and avid investors — on popular channels including “Cocomelon
Nursery Rhymes,” “Talking Tom” and “Like Nastya,” according to a placement
report Fairplay received from Google. In total, the group’s ads were placed
1,446 times on YouTube children’s video channels.
Adalytics, the company that published the research first
reported on by The New York Times last week, said it had analyzed similar ad
campaigns on children’s channels from several other media buyers.
On Wednesday morning, Fairplay, the Center for Digital
Democracy and two other nonprofit groups lodged a complaint with the Federal
Trade Commission, asking the agency to investigate Google and YouTube’s data
and advertising practices on videos made for children.
In a letter to Lina Khan, the FTC chair, the groups said the
new research “raises serious questions” about whether Google had violated federal
children’s privacy rules.
Michael Aciman, a Google spokesperson, said: “The
conclusions in this report point to a fundamental misunderstanding of how
advertising works on made-for-kids content. We do not allow ads personalization
on made-for-kids content, and we do not allow advertisers to target children
with ads across any of our products.”
Google said it continued to abide by child privacy
commitments it made to the FTC. It added that some YouTube channels feature a
mix of videos for children and adults and that, as a result, it was possible
that Fairplay had received audience segment reports for ads appearing on videos
that were not made for children.
The conclusions in this report point to a fundamental misunderstanding of how advertising works on made-for-kids content. We do not allow ads personalization on made-for-kids content, and we do not allow advertisers to target children with ads across any of our products.
This is not the first time that Fairplay and the Center for
Digital Democracy have pressed the FTC to investigate Google and YouTube over
children’s privacy. In a complaint to the agency in 2018, the two
organizations, along with 21 other groups, accused the company of improperly
collecting data from children who watched children’s videos.
In 2019, the FTC and the state of New York found that the
company had illegally collected personal information from children watching
children’s channels. Regulators said the company had profited from using
children’s data to target them with ads.
Google and YouTube agreed to pay a record $170 million to
settle regulators’ accusations.
“There are very few legal protections for children online,”
said Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay. “One of the few
obligations that platforms like YouTube have is to not use children’s personal
information to track them or serve personalized ads.”
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