GUEST COLUMNIST
Gary Pope, co-founder and ceo of Kids Industries, takes a look at the new YouTube rules on what it describes as ‘overly commercial content’ and how it’s time to adapt, adopt and improve. Right: Gary Pope, ceo and co-founder, Kids Industries.
UNBOXING HAS BEEN UNBOXED
I
don’t need to tell you that YouTube is the biggest, brightest and best platform for children’s content. Or that children spend more time on it than they do watching proper telly, or even that it is perhaps the most effective medium for marketers that want to connect with those kids. This corner of the internet has been increasingly more important to businesses that sell to families and children, however fundamental aspects of the platform are evolving and the way we use the platform to connect with consumers may well need to change too. At the end of 2019 YouTube paid $170 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General that they had illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent. At the time the company refused to acknowledge that portions of the platform were clearly directed to kids. An utterly daft thing to have done, but the message that they needed to change landed. I very much doubt that money had anything to do with that realisation. Parent company Alphabet says in the first line of its code of conduct that staff should ‘do the right thing’. There has always been a moral or ethical dimension when marketing to children and young people, but today it’s more than a side thought to do so, it’s essential and
a responsibility to take seriously. After receiving a costly fine, YouTube doubled down on YouTube Kids and made it a safe place to visit - no paid promotions and expert human/algorithmic hybrid curation. All content that was kid-friendly was to be labelled as such and they shut down serving targeted ads in this content.
“ The way we use
products’. They can literally go anywhere they like with this. There’s an argument that content pertaining to shows that preschoolers love, are overtly commercial content because the bulk of revenue comes directly from consumer products that spin out of these shows. Multiple studies have proven the link between a child’s enjoyment of a TV show and their request for product, so there’s a big debate coming over what constitutes good content that nourishes the children’s minds and what is the content that just drives them to buy stuff. The interesting thing is that these changes are not required by law. This is YouTube getting ahead of the game; these are the changes that will be required in time, but ones that even the lawmakers haven't seen yet. It’s a good reminder to all that children aren’t commodities to be commercialised and frankly, that is where the whole influencer thing has been heading for a while. Children have always found commercial content engaging it's exciting to fantasise about all the toys you'd like to play with after all - but there is a massive difference between a healthy obsession with a leaf through (what was) the Argos catalogue and the square eyes that come from unboxing videos on loop. It's time to read up on what’s coming and how to adapt, adopt and improve. Commerce will after all, find a way and there's few more commercially savvy than those in the toy industry.
YouTube to connect with consumers may well need to change.” Fast forward to this summer and we get news of a somewhat vague and quietly revealed announcement of a crackdown on overtly commercial content. In a blog post the company said it would start removing such content and those that ‘focused on product packaging’ in the coming weeks. It appears that the days of that weird phenomena - the unboxing video - are over, but the line between acceptable content and ‘overtly commercial content’ is a blurred one. Especially if you're not quite seven. CONTENT DEBATES It’s clear that the door is open to further stiffening of the rules - with YouTube promising to remove any content that ‘incites viewers to buy a product’ and ‘content focused on the excessive accumulation or consumption of
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