Does YouTube Kids Purposefully Teach Kids to Watch YouTube Ads?
My 18 month old daughter uses YouTube for two things: Peppa Pig and that Imogen Heap song that was made to be baby crack . But there is one more thing about the YouTube Kids app that they want her to watch. In particular, advertising … for YouTube Kids .
I understand, I understand: Free apps must have advertising support. At first I thought it was just an attempt to get me to pay for YouTube Red . In the evening, the same app, with exactly the same settings, advertises video series exclusive to YouTube Red, including a video featuring Minecraft megastar DanTDM. On weekends, movie advertisements are shown here. But in the morning, at the best time for toddlers, all the ads you see are for the app you’re already using.
My daughter gets upset with the ads because if she clicks on Peppa Pig, she fucking needs Peppa Pig. If, instead, a large rectangle ads running, she clicks on one of the small rectangles, which have pig Peppa. And then she, too, will have to watch ads about this.
At first I thought, I can’t wait for her to learn to recognize the skip ad button, or sit still for the 15 seconds it takes to wait out the ad that can’t be missed. But then I thought: maybe that’s the point .
I asked Nina Tyler, Senior Communications Officer, YouTube group at Google, what the purpose of these ads is. Here is the full text of her email response:
Hi Beth, on YouTube and in our companion apps, we run in-house ads from time to time.
I asked again how they make money and if they serve a different purpose. She didn’t answer.
Ads are also not on their own: they are preceded by a three-second bumper telling you that you are about to watch the ad. These bumpers began to appear after the Campaign for an Ad-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint , which stated, in particular, that children cannot distinguish between what is an advertisement and what is not. Likewise, YouTube Kids has an advertising policy that bans a lot – interactive ads, food and drink ads – perhaps leaving little to advertise other than YouTube itself.
These ads may not directly generate revenue for YouTube, but if they teach kids to sit still while watching ads, they will become smarter consumers as they get older – and perhaps easier to appreciate. Either that, or I get tired of crying and I’ll go to YouTube Red.