And after a research report last week found that YouTube’s advertising practices have the potential to undermine the privacy of children who watch children’s videos, the company said it limited viewer data collection and did not serve targeted ads on these videos.
These types of personalized advertising, which use data to tailor marketing to users’ online activities and interests, can be effective in finding the right consumers. However, under federal privacy law, children’s online services must obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from users under 13 to target them with ads — an obligation YouTube extends 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 used ad placement tools from Google, YouTube’s parent company, to run a $10 ad campaign this month targeting different groups of adults, exclusively on its kids’ video channels.
The ads were shown to users in consumer segments selected by the children’s group – including motorcycle enthusiasts, high-end computer enthusiasts and avid investors – on popular channels including “Cocomelon Nursery Songsand Talking Tom andLike Nastya”, according to a placement report received by Fairplay from Google. In all, group ads were placed 1,446 times on YouTube children’s video channels.
Adalytics, the company that published it search The New York Times first reported last week that it had done so Analyze similar advertising campaigns on children’s channels from many other media buyers.
On Wednesday morning, Fairplay, the Center for Digital Democracy and two other nonprofit groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking the agency to investigate Google and YouTube’s data and advertising practices regarding videos for kids.
In a letter to Lina M. Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said the groups new research “raises serious questions” about whether Google violated federal children’s privacy rules.
“The conclusions in this report point to a fundamental misunderstanding of how ads on content made for children work,” said Michael Aseman, a Google spokesperson. “We do not allow personalization of ads on content made for children, nor do we allow advertisers to target ads to children across any of our products.”
Google said it continued to abide by the children’s privacy commitments it made to the Federal Trade Commission, and added that some YouTube channels show a mix of children’s and adult videos, and as a result, it’s possible that Fairplay has received reports of audience segments for ads. On videos not intended for children.
This isn’t the first time Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy have pressured the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google and YouTube over children’s privacy. In a complaint filed with the agency in 2018, the two organizations, along with 21 other groups, accused the company of improperly collecting data from children who watched videos of children.
And in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission and the state of New York found that the company illegally collected personal information from children who watched children’s channels. The regulators said that the company has Benefit from using children’s data to target them with ads.
Google and YouTube have agreed to pay a record $170 million to settle the regulators’ accusations.
“There are very few legal protections for children online,” said Josh Jolin, executive director of Fairplay. “One of the few commitments that platforms like YouTube have is not to use children’s personal information to track them or serve personalized ads.”