targeting children....
Perhaps money making institutions should not be allowed to market to children, at all?
Of course, this might leave the religious corporations struggling*...
P.
*religion remains the top investment amongst those with no idea.
Universal Pictures told off for scaring kids with nasty vid
Universal Pictures has had its hand slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for scaring kiddies by featuring a 15-rated horror film clip before Youtube videos of Minecraft characters. The complaint was made after an eight-year-old boy saw a Youtube ad for the film As Above, So Below and became distressed by it. Scenes …
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Wednesday 31st December 2014 18:16 GMT SteveK
Re: targeting children....
The problem seems to be that they are allowed to assume that not logged in = over 18 since they have no way to know the age otherwise, which means that they can show the ads to anyone. The only way they can reliably not show the ads to children is to require login and require that everyone including children disclose personal information, such as age (and probably a dozen other mandatory fields for marketing purposes). Which is also something that is not encouraged nor desirable.
So perhaps the only workable solution is to ban ads altogether? Or at least ads that are not suitable for children, other than on sites that are targetting adults (and require adults to sign up to view).
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Wednesday 31st December 2014 18:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: targeting children....
"The only way they can reliably not show the ads to children is to require login and require that everyone including children disclose personal information, such as age"
You've said the right solution (age-tiered ads), but a bit backwards and come to the wrong conclusion (to ban ads).
What they need to do is:
- Not signed in = family friendly ads only
- Signed in = ads suitable up to 13yrs (I believe 13 is the min age in the T&Cs)
- Signed in - supplied age in profile = ads suitable for that age
No need to ban ads. :-)
Although this is probably more for Google/YouTube to provide support for rather than something Universal Pictures can implement themselves. It may already be in there, can't say I've ever advertised online.
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Wednesday 31st December 2014 19:24 GMT frank ly
Re: targeting children....
If I remember correctly, YouTube asks you to sign-in if you're about to see a video clip that is intended for a 'mature' audience. They can determine this by the clip being reported and then moderated by them, or by the author of the clip doing a self-classification. So surely it was up to Universal Pictures to correctly classify their advert?
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Thursday 1st January 2015 05:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: targeting children....
"If I remember correctly, YouTube asks you to sign-in if you're about to see a video clip that is intended for a 'mature' audience. They can determine this by the clip being reported and then moderated by them, or by the author of the clip doing a self-classification. So surely it was up to Universal Pictures to correctly classify their advert?"
A video clip yes, but the video clip wasn't for mature audiences, the clip was of Minecraft suitable for children. It was the ad inserted before it by Google/YouTube on behalf of Universal Pictures that was for mature audiences, so either:
- Universal Pictures didn't flag the ad as mature
- Google/YouTube don't provide age-targeted ads (I find that hard to believe)
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Friday 2nd January 2015 05:11 GMT solo
Re: targeting children....
"..YouTube asks you to sign-in if you're about to see a video clip.."
This is true for the published content, but I doubt if they apply same logic (warning or filtering) for the ads. It seems more like the publishing site's responsibility for proper moderation of ads for which Google already has murky history.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/21/google_was_repeatedly_warned_over_illegal_drug_ads/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/13/google_potential_doj_settlement/
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Thursday 1st January 2015 21:50 GMT Crazy Operations Guy
"religious corporations"
Well, technically the Catholic Church is one of the largest corporations on the planet:
-Multiple offices in nearly every country in the world (Even multiple offices in prime locations)
-Just under 1.25 Billion customers
-Over 415,000 employees
-Continued operation for well over 1000 years
-Insane levels of income (No public figures available, but given their real-estate assets...)
-Unparallelled levels of political influence (No taxes, laws preventing investigation of finances...)
-Extremely low cost vs. extremely high value of produced products
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Friday 2nd January 2015 09:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "religious corporations"
"-Insane levels of income (No public figures available, but given their real-estate assets...)"
Well, as the CofE holds around the 12-14 BILLION GBP mark in stocks and shares, I think theirs will be considerably higher.
Still nothing like a multi-billion pound charity emotionally blackmailing people into giving more cash is there?
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Wednesday 31st December 2014 20:57 GMT ratfox
What about YouTube?
I'm not sure why YouTube is not responsible for this. They do check that adult content is not viewable unless you are signed in and have indicated an age above 18. They could do the same for 15-rated horror movies… I guess there's no legal obligation on their part, though. Did Universal mislabel the video? Or did Universal somehow choose the ads for the context?
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Wednesday 31st December 2014 21:46 GMT Grease Monkey
What measures did they take then? Mincemeat is kids game and Stampy in particular has done a lot to tailor his videos to a younger audience. I don't know whether this was careless or cynical, but it's clear that no reasonable measures were taken to stop this being seen by kids. They should have been punished for making such stupid claims.
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Friday 2nd January 2015 09:42 GMT Version 1.0
Same problem at the Cinema
We've seen the same thing at the Cinemas in the US - you got to a kids film and they run trailers for upcoming movies that are not age appropriate. Sure, the ratings agency may think the trailer is "safe" but it can still scare the crap out of a kid.
Case in point - went to see "The Last Mimzy" with my daughter and she had nightmares for a month after the trailer for "Taken" - where a girl her age is kidnapped by human traffickers - was shown. It was several years before she returned to the movie theaters.
In my opinion the ratings people are owned by the movie companies and their ratings are essentially worthless.
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Saturday 3rd January 2015 02:20 GMT Katie Saucey
Some people really believe this
"..all reasonable measures to ensure the ad had been targeted at viewers who were 18 years old or above"
But yet it was still posted online. Add this to the fat book of 'why Hollywood is woefully out of touch with reality' facts, or "Hollywood doesn't give two shits" facts, I bet they still think 8 year olds never stay up past 9:00pm as well.
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Saturday 3rd January 2015 13:22 GMT JaitcH
YouTube.COM is a ...
US domain that plays by US rules.
EUROland complains about the US meddling in things such as MS servers in Ireland ... they should understand this works both ways.
My web sites carry stuff that deliberately challenges UK laws - but do I care? No, I obey the laws of the land where the domains are registered and the servers are located.
The Advertising Standards Authority is manned by a bunch of ageing retards who live in the 1950's - BANNED IN BRITAIN is their rallying call. Time that community standards ruled, not old fuddy-duddies who think missionary is the ONLY way.
They are the types that censored Bloody January, Again by Flanders and Swann.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
