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Internet Advertising to Children

Children as young as four are being targeted by internet advertisers and often the interaction with the children is unmediated by parents or teachers. UK advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi noted: “Interactive technology is at the forefront of kid culture, allowing us to enter into contemporary kid life and communicate with them in an environment they call their own.”

Advertisements appear on banners at the top of websites, on scroll down frames at the side of the windows, and unbidden on pop-up windows. There are even animated product “spokescharacters” to interact with the children and develop relationships with them so that they can be persuaded to buy something.

Internet advertising is particularly effective at targeting children because they are less able to tell the difference between advertisements and other content. They are more likely, for example, to click on banner ads thinking they are part of the website, offering information or entertainment, and they tend not to take any notice of annotations like “AD” or “PAID” that are supposed to indicate advertisements.

The meagre regulations that television advertising is subject to don’t apply to the internet. Advertisers and marketers are free to merge content with advertising and exploit children with few if any limits. The ads on internet sites are often integrated with the other content of the internet site – games and competitions, music downloads, video clips, discount coupons, online chat rooms, free email, club membership, gossip, fashion tips or advice – which is designed to keep the children engrossed in play for hours at a time and to keep them coming back. Marketers and advertisers are “fundamentally reshaping the digital culture, creating new hybrid forms that blend communications, content and commerce”.

For example the Family Education Network, a division of Pearson Education, runs FunBrain.com and FEkids.com websites for children with “the hottest collections of games and activities” on the internet. It offers advertisers access to “over 7.5 million unique kids targeted by age and gender”, three quarters of whom are between 6 and 12 years old.

Three quarters of food manufacturers advertising on the internet have designed websites specifically for children, some for very young children; many others have websites that have a children’s section. The address of the website is often given on the product packaging. Most of these websites are plastered with brand logos and advertising claims and include links to other food related sites. On some websites children are encouraged to view television advertisements for the product. On others they are offered branded downloads such as music clips, mobile phone ringtone, desktop wallpaper, screensavers.

Market Research

Most commercial websites elicit personal information from the children and require it before they can play games or join a club. Some offer children prizes and free gifts for filling in long surveys that provide marketers with purchasing behaviour and preferences. For example: “Welcome to Kidzeyes.com, where kids tell us what’s on their minds – and get free stuff for doing it! With each survey you complete, you’ll earn valuable points that you can turn in for cash and/or prizes.”

Some websites send children an email after they visit and many send cookies to get unsolicited information from them. Information gathered on websites may be sold on to other marketing companies. In fact market research is “in some cases surpassing advertising and sponsorship as the key source of revenue” for websites. This information can also be used to send individualised marketing messages to each child based on their “unique preferences, behaviors, and psychological profile”.

In 2010 the Wall Street Journal "examined 50 sites popular with U.S. teens and children to see what tracking tools they installed on a test computer. As a group, the sites placed 4,123 'cookies,' 'beacons' and other pieces of tracking technology. That is 30% more than were found in an analysis of the 50 most popular U.S. sites overall, which are generally aimed at adults."

Such sites also take advantage of the way children and teens like to answer questionnaires and surveys about themselves and their families and their likes, dislikes and concerns, as it gives them a chance to express themselves. However pre-adolescent children often do not understand the problems associated with divulging personal information. Legislation in the US now requires children under 13 to obtain verifiable parental consent before supplying it. However, the regulations do not apply to contest entries, newsletter subscriptions or in response to emails from the children. And it is easy for children under 13 to bypass having to get parental permission by giving a false birth date.

Market researchers are also able to glean much information about children and teens just by monitoring their chat rooms, bulletin boards, discussion groups and other online activities. Many children and teenagers use the internet to socialise and to express themselves. Around half of American children between 10 and 17 regularly visit internet chat rooms where they give their opinions. Advertisers have set up chat sites and discussion forums to take advantage of children’s natural sociability.

Links

• 'Deceptive On-line Advertising to Children', Steve Lovstrom Productions
• 'Kids Online', An Educator's Guide To Commercialism
• 'Commercialization and Kids and the WWW', An Educator's Guide To Commercialism
• 'Information Privacy and Children', Media Awareness Network
• 'Internet marketing', Wikipedia

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