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It baffles me that more countries haven't put legislation in place to severely limit what ads can be served to under 18 year olds (or at least under 16). I wor

It baffles me that more countries haven't put legislation in place to severely limit what ads can be served to under 18 year olds (or at least under 16). I worked in an ad agency a number of years ago, and Phillip Morris approached us with a deliberate plan to launch big budget ad campaigns on social media platforms specifically because they could get in front of younger demos more easily (traditional media having existing regulations in my country). The original idea was to build a large database of prospects to sell direct to even after regulation eventually cracks down on them. Amazingly no regulation has come yet, and Meta has done little to no self-regulation. You can blame parents, but even then one under appreciated problem with digital ads is the lack of shared experience. With TV advertising, you know what your kid is seeing, everyone can see a verify what ad ran at what time on what channel etc. If a parent and a kid are scrolling social media their experience is entirely different, and you can't go back and see what someone else has seen.

EasyMark 2y ago
Probably because being tracked across all platforms is a bad idea in a democractic/liberal type of country, and not worth the "think of the children" argument. At some point parents have to take some responsibility.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  First, I’m not sure being tracked across all platforms is actually a requirement here. On device age verification and device attestation and/or simply assuming anonymous users are under 18 from an ad safety perspective would allow a level of anonymity across platforms. It might also help solve a large chunk of ad fraud. Second, I think you really need strong evidence to say that the upside you’re asserting is truly worth sacrificing kids safety.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > At some point parents have to take some responsibility By voting for the party that promises to enforce bans against it? There's more than one way to be responsible, and it's not good to be a "helicopter parent" even if you have enough free time to actually pair-browse the internet with your kid, and even if you did that doesn't stop them seeing inappropriate content or ads it just means there's a witness who knows they saw inappropriate content or ads.
  - petre 2y ago
    Even voting is influenced by social media campaign as recently seen in Romania, Moldova and Georgia. The right approach is ban the behaviour and fine the perpetrators like the EU does. If you can't punish the perps, fine the ad delivery network instead.
Fnoord 2y ago
My kid recently got a second hand iPad tablet. On it, she uses YouTube Kids. I made an account for her. Now, they ask _me_ for consent, since she cannot legally give it. They throw ads at her about toys, but this is illegal in my country to target children with ads. Ads are supposed to target parents, not kids. Now, if it were one ad at start, I'd hate it, but they go further: in a 10-minute movie, the thing quits like 3 times to show my kid an ad. She barely has the attention span to watch the bloody vid! You know why they do it? Not because it is legal; because they get away with it. Law is irrelevant if it isn't uphold.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  That’s the other thing as well, we need to spend more time upholding laws that already exist instead of getting distracted with these weird news publisher content regulations like Canada has.
  - troyvit 2y ago
    And Programmatic advertising makes this extremely difficult. Once you add a giant, automated ad exchange to advertising you've created opaque supply chains that help make it trivial to obfuscate who actually makes money from an ad. This article on ad fraud goes into more detail: https://xenoss.io/blog/programmatic-ad-fraud-detection https://xenoss.io/blog/programmatic-ad-fraud-detection
    - crowcroft 2y ago
      Agree on issues with programmatic. Compared to the number of dollars, and in particular number of dollars being spent on ads served to under 18s, programmatic is a rounding error compared to Google, Meta, TikTok etc. https://www.emarketer.com/uploads/pdf/US_Ad_Spending_2023.pdf https://www.emarketer.com/uploads/pdf/US_Ad_Spending_2023.pd...
      - troyvit 2y ago
        Whoah good point. Man for how small that market is they sure spend a lot of time screwing it up. Given their closed systems, do Google, Meta and TikTok have tighter controls over ads served to kids that they just aren't applying, or is it something else?

EasyMark 2y ago

Probably because being tracked across all platforms is a bad idea in a democractic/liberal type of country, and not worth the "think of the children" argument. At some point parents have to take some responsibility.

crowcroft 2y ago
First, I’m not sure being tracked across all platforms is actually a requirement here. On device age verification and device attestation and/or simply assuming anonymous users are under 18 from an ad safety perspective would allow a level of anonymity across platforms. It might also help solve a large chunk of ad fraud. Second, I think you really need strong evidence to say that the upside you’re asserting is truly worth sacrificing kids safety.
ben_w 2y ago
> At some point parents have to take some responsibility By voting for the party that promises to enforce bans against it? There's more than one way to be responsible, and it's not good to be a "helicopter parent" even if you have enough free time to actually pair-browse the internet with your kid, and even if you did that doesn't stop them seeing inappropriate content or ads it just means there's a witness who knows they saw inappropriate content or ads.
- petre 2y ago
  Even voting is influenced by social media campaign as recently seen in Romania, Moldova and Georgia. The right approach is ban the behaviour and fine the perpetrators like the EU does. If you can't punish the perps, fine the ad delivery network instead.

Fnoord 2y ago

My kid recently got a second hand iPad tablet. On it, she uses YouTube Kids. I made an account for her. Now, they ask _me_ for consent, since she cannot legally give it. They throw ads at her about toys, but this is illegal in my country to target children with ads. Ads are supposed to target parents, not kids. Now, if it were one ad at start, I'd hate it, but they go further: in a 10-minute movie, the thing quits like 3 times to show my kid an ad. She barely has the attention span to watch the bloody vid! You know why they do it? Not because it is legal; because they get away with it. Law is irrelevant if it isn't uphold.

crowcroft 2y ago
That’s the other thing as well, we need to spend more time upholding laws that already exist instead of getting distracted with these weird news publisher content regulations like Canada has.
- troyvit 2y ago
  And Programmatic advertising makes this extremely difficult. Once you add a giant, automated ad exchange to advertising you've created opaque supply chains that help make it trivial to obfuscate who actually makes money from an ad. This article on ad fraud goes into more detail: https://xenoss.io/blog/programmatic-ad-fraud-detection https://xenoss.io/blog/programmatic-ad-fraud-detection
  - crowcroft 2y ago
    Agree on issues with programmatic. Compared to the number of dollars, and in particular number of dollars being spent on ads served to under 18s, programmatic is a rounding error compared to Google, Meta, TikTok etc. https://www.emarketer.com/uploads/pdf/US_Ad_Spending_2023.pdf https://www.emarketer.com/uploads/pdf/US_Ad_Spending_2023.pd...
    - troyvit 2y ago
      Whoah good point. Man for how small that market is they sure spend a lot of time screwing it up. Given their closed systems, do Google, Meta and TikTok have tighter controls over ads served to kids that they just aren't applying, or is it something else?