Some consumer advocates have urged The Federal Trade Commission to conduct an investigation on alleged suspicious YouTube app advertisement practices. As Time reported, Google run these advertisements via YouTube's kids' app.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Children Now are among the consumer groups that raised questions on such advertisement means, according to Parenting.com.
Members of the groups claimed that YouTube kids' app's combined content and advertisements might have misled minds of young audiences. Consumer advocates announced their concerns in written form via a press release.
Based on a report in Parenting.com, members of the consumer groups mentioned above sought to have the FTC question Google based the following grounds:
-Intermixing, too seamlessly, advertising and programming, which is deceptive to kids, who lack the cognitive ability to distinguish between them.
-Featuring "branded channels" for companies like McDonald's, Barbie and Fisher-Price, which are basically program-length commercials.
-Distributing "user-generated" segments that feature products like toys and candy without disclosing the business relationships between producers of the videos and the product manufacturers.
-Violating Google's own advertising policies that promise food and beverage ads will not appear on the YouTube Kids app.
In a Yahoo! Finance report, it was revealed that the consumer complaint written report further said:
"...the company appears to have ignored not only the scientific research on children's developmental limitations, but also the well-established system of advertising safeguards that has been in place on both broadcast and cable television for decades."
Google, in turn, denied such allegations. In lieu of Yahoo! Finance's request, a spokesperson for YouTube responded, by saying:
"We worked with numerous partners and child advocacy groups when developing YouTube Kids. While we are always open to feedback on ways to improve the app, we were not contacted directly by the signers of this letter and strongly disagree with their contentions, including the suggestion that no free, ad-supported experience for kids will ever be acceptable. We disagree and think that great content shouldn't be reserved for only those families who can afford it."
Aaron Task of Yahoo! Finance did not seem to agree with the consumer's opinions in relation to sneaky advertisement. Task saw Google as an online ad platform as everybody else has always does. The Yahoo Finance staff gave his take on the matter, saying, "Are we surprised Google is serving up ads?" This is what Google does, whether it's search, whether it's YouTube-- they are an ad platform, the likes of which the world has never seen."
Task added that it is the parents' responsibility to "make sure their children aren't being bombarded by ads."
