Massive drop in views on kid channels

moshi

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I'm several hours into the FTC Workshop about COPPA and all that I have to say is... it is time to start making Fitness & Wellness Videos. The introduction made it very clear that they have little interest in repealing any part of their decision and all of these panels are heavily weighted with people who want to somehow make the laws even more strict. All of these creators who said they were going to rise up and be represented are not getting screen time. At one point it was suggested that YouTube gate the entire website and not allow anything other than logged-in access (could you imagine?), to which YouTube's VP of Content Partnerships squirmed through an answer. The Rovio guy might as well have stayed home in Finland... it was clear that his goal was to publicly address that his company was compliant and not do much else for us - he almost seemed scared. I could tell by the general demeanor of the Pokemon guy that he felt the whole thing was bull. Those who were clinging onto hope, It is time to stop making videos for kids. Start making makeup videos or something. GDPR (think Mega COPPA) was passed in California, there were many supporters of aspects of it in these panels, and it is clear that it is going to spread. I think that the bar is going to be raised to 18 and you'll be kissing all of your science videos aimed at teenagers goodbye. Don't waste your time now. Choose a new niche. The CPM's are better anyway. Work on Business or Website Development niche to pull in the big web advertisers or something. Do a home repair blog to pull in the big insurance advertisers. Anything but kids.
I already dont understand how they are going to survive such a massive hit on billions of views that will no longer give ad revenue, imagine if you raised the bar to 18.... that's like 80% of audience. Or does anyone think that YT isn't an underage populated kid? it's kids that are 24 7 on phones. It would be the END. YT must have a backup plan otherwise I Dont get it.
 

Redterrors

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even amazon and facebook cannot. Youtube has no competition with this much traffic.
To build infrastarcture like youtube i cannot imagine how much money that is
To be clear, there is no legitimate competitor for Youtube as far as an open video platform. We must explore antitrust enforcement to fix that problem, but that is a conversation for another day. What I am referring to is competition that curates video content for the kids niche. A couple of companies poised to take on the challenge are SuperAwesome and Batterypop. The problem is Youtube is so dominate, content creators have kept everything on Youtube and have just tried to add the same content to the competing companies as secondary options. This can't work. Take all the content down and replace with a video explaining how Youtube has no loyalty to trusted creators. Obviously, it will be a slow process, but for those of us around when Youtube actually had to invite you to monetize content, it is the same concept.
 

dv2000

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I already dont understand how they are going to survive such a massive hit on billions of views that will no longer give ad revenue, imagine if you raised the bar to 18.... that's like 80% of audience. Or does anyone think that YT isn't an underage populated kid? it's kids that are 24 7 on phones. It would be the END. YT must have a backup plan otherwise I Dont get it.
There will be contextual ads. I think youtube will try to add more contextual ads
 

dv2000

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Crown

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As many of you have mentioned, the headache that YouTube will have is differentiating content that is "targeting kids" from content that kids watch or "kid-friendly" content. It's all so subjective and can't be done accurately by an algorithm and even human beings would have trouble making the correct decision.

Also it appears it's not all doom and gloom. Some creators are laughing all the way the bank!


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Kids’ content upstart Moonbug is making a massive foray into merchandising.

The company’s foundational property, popular YouTube children’s channel Little Baby Bum (20.6 million subscribers), has released a line of toys alongside the California-based consumer products firm MGA Entertainment (and its children’s imprint Little Tikes). Four toys are currently available via Amazon and Walmart, with additional products aimed at preschoolers slated to roll out in coming months.

Full article below:

_______________________
 

ilikeswords64

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As much as adexchanger wants it to be, the topic of behavioral versus contextual was not a central theme of this workshop. This article was a great summary of literally the last panel from a very sad 8 hour session of speakers primarily advocating for a stricter COPPA. Contextual is as good as Behavioral? Please, Kate O'Loughlin - that statement comes from a huge bias, a bias that the company that she works for was founded on and that they sell to their advertisers (who are terrified of COPPA). Look at your own data guys - ads which are behaviorally targeted are more effective than ads that are contextually targeted. It is science, and Harry Jho (Mother Goose Club) was speaking from experience. The FTC designed this workshop to jump topics so many times that nobody really could form any kind of conclusion (government-style), and the moderators intervened more often than not to defer to a speaker who had a strong position on privacy versus someone from the private sector (from the few who were actually on the panels). Harry Jho made it clear several times that his company doesn't have any intent on doing horrible things with children's data, and that they would be satisfied with high-level non-identifying information to help advertisers and to stay afloat. I've got kids guys, and I have to say that I've never really been offended if an ad for pokemon came up because they understood that my child liked pokemon. It is ultimately my decision to tell them that they are or are not getting it for Christmas. If cigarette ads were coming up, that'd be a scarier conversation, and they probably will be coming with all of the scrambling that is going to happen due to these changes. I've worked in digital marketing for many years, have collaborated with many of the scary big data companies that everyone talks about, used CRM's and marketing automation platforms, etc. I have first-hand knowledge of and understand the extent in which the data is used. Rovio isn't pulling up in white vans and pulling kids off of the street with this data (one of the original reasons for COPPA), and if my kids aren't going to want the new toy from the behaviorally targeted ad, they are going to want the one from the TV ad. Stripping away our livelihoods isn't going to prevent kids and their immature prefrontal cortexes from being manipulated by advertisements. Katharina Kopp thinks that she is saving the day when in reality, kids are still affected. Julia Tama was on point with pointing out her bias. Katharina would probably prefer that nobody owned a TV and that children played with wooden toys in their window-less basements. Choose a new niche - these people aren't going away. It'll get worse, I promise, and they'll come for the other platforms that you guys are talking about. FTC made that clear, and just doubled their budget. I would advise that you convert your channel to 13+ content with an exit plan to move to a non-kid focused niche. Do it before the reality of January hits you.
 

Redterrors

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There will be contextual ads. I think youtube will try to add more contextual ads
Youtube doesn't care about kid content creators. Their engineers are fully prepared to expose children to junk videos and content that is made for a 13+ audience. There is a clear COPPA compliant solution that takes care of loyal content creators, but they want nothing of it. They don't think they will lose views or ad revenue. Youtube doesn't care which channels get the money and they don't care what kind of content is exposed to kids. They don't do a background check or vet any creator. They win every lawsuit. The only entity that they can't beat is the US Government. This company has for years touted to marketers that they have all of these kid viewers, but told the government and the media that YOUTUBE wasn't for people under 13. They claimed Youtube Kids existed for this content, but never put ads on the kids app and never fully invested in the app for a curated experience. Google doesn't change anything when you bring it to their attention unless they get embarrassed in the mainstream media or the US Government calls. I remember complaining to my partner manager about Elsagate and they would agree with me on the phone, but did nothing until the news covered it. People on here want to complain about the FTC and the government bureaucracy, but nobody wants to call out Youtube for their failures.
 

Redterrors

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Please, Kate O'Loughlin - that statement comes from a huge bias, a bias that the company that she works for was founded on and that they sell to their advertisers (who are terrified of COPPA).
Her company was founded on the premise of being transparent and complying with the law with a clear message to content creators and advertisers on expectations. They invested a lot of money into providing a COPPA compliant option before the FTC was even investigating Youtube. I would say hearing from someone willing to have a platform that is COPPA complaint before it was ever in the news is important to have on the panel. Whether you like it or not, it is a law that was passed by Congress and it is one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in today's America.
 

ilikeswords64

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Her company was founded on the premise of being transparent and complying with the law with a clear message to content creators and advertisers on expectations. They invested a lot of money into providing a COPPA compliant option before the FTC was even investigating Youtube. I would say hearing from someone willing to have a platform that is COPPA complaint before it was ever in the news is important to have on the panel. Whether you like it or not, it is a law that was passed by Congress and it is one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in today's America.
I'm not saying that she shouldn't have been on the panel, or that her work and viewpoint isn't substantially different than the others, but that her comment (the one immediately before the sentence you started quoting me on) comparing advertising types was slanted in her direction. We can see from our own data that behavioral advertising is more effective.
 
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dv2000

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"Rovio isn't pulling up in white vans and pulling kids off of the street with this data (one of the original reasons for COPPA) "
well this is true. One guy even talked about it what the COPPA was even made for but now they apply it to even ads?