YouTube is still tracking children through ads served to video marked as “made for kids,” according Adalytics, a research firm that looks at ad campaigns for brands.
The study found that ads from Fortune 500 advertisers and major media agencies are still being attached to children’s content, including popular channels such as Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes & Kids and ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes & Kids Songs. As a result, data brokers and ad tech companies are receiving data from those viewers and could be tracking them, Adalytics said.
YouTube, its parent Alphabet, and these firms may be violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which requires services to get a parent’s permission before collecting data from users that are younger than 13 for the purposes of ads. In addition, this would be the second time YouTube was caught violating COPPA. In 2019, Alphabet, representing Google and YouTube, had to pay $170 million to settle COPPA violations, and agreed to a consent decree forbidding them from serving ads that tracked children.