Kidfluencers giving Google legal headache
Rampant YouTube marketing blurs line between content, ads
On Feb. 13, JoJo Siwa posted a YouTube video from a Target store, detailing her plan to buy “every single item of JoJo merch” inside.
She starts with clothes, piling her own trademarked shirts and dresses into a cart. “I literally got one of everything I could find!” Siwa says to the camera. “Now, let’s go see if they’ve got toys.”
Siwa encapsulates many of the things that made YouTube the world’s most-watched video site. She dances, sings and screams excitedly into the camera, drawing millions of viewers, mostly young girls. The 15year-old “kidfluencer” also highlights how YouTube’s success with children has created an ethical and perhaps even legal minefield for its owner, Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
In addition to shooting videos, Siwa cuts endorsement deals and sells two branded apparel lines with Target Corp., the second-largest U.S. retailer. When she posts clips from the company’s stores, she’s creating content that is hard to distinguish from advertising and will be watched by hundreds of thousands of impressionable kids.
Since it was founded in 2005, YouTube has operated beyond the reach of rules that govern advertising on traditional television. But the site has grown so large and influential that the days of light-touch regulation may soon be over. Kids’ programming is where the crackdown is most likely.
The problem with sponsored content is that it’s not always clear what’s an ad. Kids are particularly vulnerable to being manipulated by paid clips that masquerade as legitimate content. On TV, the ground rules are clearer: Ads come when the show takes a break.
“The uptick in sponsored content and child influencers is very overwhelming,” said Dona Fraser, director of the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, an industry watchdog funded by companies including Google. “This has exploded in front of our eyes. How do you now wrangle every child influencer out there?”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned dozens of Instagram influencers in 2017 that they weren’t disclosing properly when a company was paying them to peddle a product.
“YouTube content creators are responsible for ensuring their content complies with local laws, regulations and YouTube Community Guidelines, including paid product placements,” YouTube said in a statement. “If content is found to violate these policies, we take action, which can include removing content.”
YouTube removed one video featuring Siwa shopping at Target, after Bloomberg News asked about it this week.
Some video creators are loath to disclose clearly that their YouTube videos are sponsored.
Kristine Pack runs “Family Fun Pack,” a channel with close to 8 million subscribers that posts sponsored clips. She says some major marketers demand such assertive disclosure — gi- ant “paid for by” text that runs on the video — that it ends up turning off viewers.
“I wouldn’t even want to watch that video,” she said about one clip she made with her kids. “It’s literally nothing but an ad.” Pack stresses that she discloses paid content.
YouTube avoids rules governing TV for children in part by citing the age restriction in its terms of service. Kids under 13 cannot use the video site. But children often lie about their age when signing up, and the sheer volume of videos aimed at children, as well as testimonials from parents, suggest that they are heavy users.
“If they really were honest brokers about whether kids were allowed on the platform, they wouldn’t have so much kids’ content,” said Colby Zintl, vice president for Common Sense Media, which is pushing Congress to improve oversight of how children use services from Google and Facebook.
“YouTube does not allow users under 13 to create or own accounts on YouTube, and when we identify an account of someone who is underage we terminate that account,” the company said.
YouTube tried to address this problem in 2015 when it launched YouTube Kids, a mobile app for viewers younger than 13 that requires parental consent. Child and consumer advocacy groups complained to the Federal Trade Commission that the YouTube Kids app contained inappropriate content, including explicit sexual language and jokes about pedophilia. In late 2017, YouTube purged thousands of videos aimed at kids after finding creepy clips spreading through its supposedly family friendly online community.
It also kicked a considerable amount of children’s content out of a program called Google Preferred, a premium package of videos that command higher ad prices, according to three people familiar with the move.
But problems persisted. Last month, advertisers including Walt Disney Co. and toy maker Hasbro Inc., paused advertising on YouTube after a blogger showed how the video site’s comments section could be used by pedophiles to tag and share clips of young girls. Google suspended comments on some videos featuring minors and deleted accounts that had left concerning comments.
YouTube doesn’t allow paid promotional content on YouTube Kids. Video creators are supposed to check a box that they received money or free products when they upload their video to the main YouTube site. Those videos are supposed to be blocked from running on the YouTube Kids app.
YouTube has avoided removing obvious kid’s content from its main website and just running it on the Kids app. That could be because of viewership numbers. The app has roughly 18 million monthly visitors, according to a person familiar with the company’s numbers. YouTube declined to comment. Google recently reported almost two billion monthly logged-in users for YouTube as a whole.
CARU’s Fraser suggested to YouTube that it build a toggle button that lets parents switch to a mode for kids with different videos and age restrictions. YouTube hasn’t responded to the idea, she said.
“They built it. They can rebuild it,” she said. “It’s a matter of whether or not they want to make the investment to do so.”