Research says that YouTube ads may have led to children being tracked online

This year, BMO Bank, a Canadian bank, was looking for Canadian adults to apply for a credit card. So the bank’s advertising agency ran a YouTube campaign using Google’s ad-targeting system that uses artificial intelligence to identify ideal customers.

But Google, which owns YouTube, has also shown the ad to viewers in the United States on a scale Barbie themed Children’s video about “Show children DianaYouTube channel for preschoolers whose videos have been viewed over 94 billion times.

When that viewer clicked on the ad, it led to the BMO website, which flagged the user’s browser with tracking software from Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies, according to New search From Adalytics, which analyzes advertising campaigns for brands.

As a result, it has been possible for leading technology companies to track children online, raising concerns about whether they are undermining federal privacy law. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPAChildren’s Online Services are required to obtain parental consent before collecting personal data from users under the age of 13 for purposes such as ad targeting.

The report’s findings raise new concerns about YouTube ads for children’s content. In 2019, YouTube and Google agreed to pay a record $170 million fine to settle charges from the Federal Trade Commission and the state of New York that the company illegally collected personal information from children who watched children’s channels. The regulators said that the company has benefited from the use of children’s data to target them with ads.

YouTube then said it would limit the collection of viewer data and Stop applying Personalized ads on kids’ videos.

On Thursday, two US senators sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, urging it to investigate whether Google and YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), citing Adalytics and The New York Times report. Senator Edward J. Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, they are concerned that the company may have tracked children and served them targeted ads without parental consent, facilitating the “widespread collection and distribution” of children’s data.

“This behavior by YouTube and Google is estimated to have affected hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of children across the United States,” the senators wrote.

Adalytics has identified over 300 adult product brands’ ads, such as cars, on approximately 100 YouTube videos marked “Made for Kids” that were shown to an unsigned user and linked to advertisers’ websites. He also found several ads on YouTube with violent content, including explosions, sniper rifles and car crashes, on children’s channels.

An analysis by The Times this month found that when a viewer who isn’t signed into YouTube clicks on ads on some of the children’s channels on the site, they are taken to the websites of brands that have placed trackers — pieces of code used for purposes such as security, Track ads or user profiling – from Amazon, Meta Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others – on users’ browsers.

As with children’s television, it is legal and common to run advertisements, including for adult consumer products such as cars or credit cards, on children’s videos. There is no evidence that Google and YouTube violated their 2019 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission

The Times shared some of Adalytics’ research with Google before it was published. Google spokesman Michael Aseman called the report’s findings “deeply flawed and misleading”. Google also challenged an earlier Adalytics report on the company’s advertising practices, which was first reported by Google The Wall Street Journal.

Google told The Times it was beneficial to run adult ads on children’s videos because parents who were watching could become customers. It also noted that showing violent ads on children’s videos violated company policy and that YouTube had “reclassified” violent ads that Adalytics cited to prevent them from showing on children’s content “moving forward”.

Google said that it did not display personalized ads on children’s videos and that its advertising practices fully complied with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The company said that when ads appear on children’s videos, they are based on web page content, not directed at user profiles. Google said it did not notify advertisers or tracking services whether a viewer coming from YouTube watched a children’s video — only that the user viewed YouTube and clicked on the ad.

The company added that it did not have the ability to control the collection of data on the brand’s site after a YouTube viewer clicked on an ad. Google said this data collection can occur when you click on an advertisement on any website.

However, ad industry veterans said they found it difficult to prevent their clients’ YouTube ads from appearing on children’s videos, according to recent Times interviews with 10 senior employees at ad agencies and related companies. They argued that placing YouTube ads put high-profile consumer brands at risk of compromising children’s privacy.

“I’m very concerned about that,” said Arielle Garcia, chief privacy officer at UM Worldwide, the advertising agency that runs the BMO campaign.

Ms. Garcia said she was speaking in general and could not comment specifically on the BMO campaign. “It shouldn’t be that hard to make sure children’s data is not collected and used inappropriately,” she said.

Google said it gave brands a one-click option to exclude their ads from appearing on YouTube videos made for kids.

The BMO campaign targeted ads using Performance Max, a specialized Google AI tool that doesn’t tell companies which specific videos their ads have been shown on. Google said the ads did not initially exclude children’s videos, and that the company recently helped the campaign update its settings.

In August, an advertisement for a different BMO credit card appeared on a video on Facebook Molt Kids Tunes Happy Bear The channel that has more than 600 million views on its cartoon videos. Google said the second ad campaign did not appear to exclude videos of children.

“BMO does not seek to target and does not knowingly target minors through its online advertisements and takes steps to prevent its advertisements from being shown to minors,” said Jeff Roman, a BMO spokesperson.

Several industry veterans have reported problems with the more traditional Google Ads services. They described how they had received reports of their ads being shown on children’s videos, and made long lists to exclude those videos, only to later see their ads on other children’s videos.

“It’s a constant game of Whac-a-Mole,” said Lou Pascalis, former head of global media for Bank of America, who now runs a marketing consulting firm.

Adalytics also said that Google has placed persistent cookies — the types of files that can track which ads a user clicks on and which sites they visit — on YouTube Kids’ videos.

The Times noted persistent Google cookies on children’s videos, including the Advertising cookie called IDE. When a viewer clicked on an ad, the same cookie also appeared on the ad page they landed on.

Google said it only used these cookies on children’s videos for commercial purposes permitted under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), such as detecting fraud or measuring the number of times a viewer sees an ad. Google said that the contents of the cookies are “encrypted and cannot be read by third parties”.

said Paul Likas, president of global public policy at SIIA, a software industry group that has members Including Google and BMO, “as long as cookies and other persistent identifiers are not used to contact an individual, collect a profile, or engage in behavioral advertising.”

The Times found an advertisement for Cole’s clothing that ran The wheels on the busThe nursery rhyme video has been viewed 2.4 billion times. The viewer who clicked the ad was taken to a Kohl’s web page that contained over 300 tracking requests from about 80 third-party services. These instructions included cross-site tracking code from Meta that could enable them to track viewers of videos Children’s video on the web.

Kohl’s did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Microsoft spokesperson said: “Our commitment to privacy shapes the way we build all of our products and services. We obtain more information so that we can conduct any additional investigation required.” Amazon said it blocked advertisers from collecting children’s data with its tools. Meta declined to comment.

Children’s privacy experts said they’re concerned about Google’s interlocking ecosystem — including its most popular web browser, video platform and… The largest digital advertising company Online child tracking facilitated by tech giants, advertisers and data brokers.

“They’ve created a conveyor belt that collects children’s data,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit focused on digital privacy.