YouTube’s child viewers may struggle to recognise adverts in videos from ‘virtual play dates’

As child vloggers have risen in fame and fortune, more and more content has been targeted at younger viewers, however research shows that children often struggle to recognise embedded advertising and there have been no attempts to introduce a disclosure system that is more tailored to child audiences, writes Rebecca Mardon. Rebecca is a senior lecturer in marketing and strategy at Cardiff University. Rebecca’s research explores emerging consumer behaviours in digital contexts, in particular ownership and possession in the context of digital materiality and emerging forms of commercialisation within online communities. [Header image credit: M.-Newman-CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0.jpg]

YouTube’s highest earning star in 2018 was a seven-year-old boy named Ryan. That’s right – a child out-earned the likes of the infamous Logan Paul, video game vlogger PewDiePie, and even make-up mogul Jeffree Star. Between June 2017 and June 2018, Ryan is estimated to have earned an impressive US$22m from the platform.

Guided by his parents, Ryan presents his own YouTube channel, Ryan ToysReview, where he unboxes and plays with the latest toys. Since joining YouTube in 2015, Ryan has amassed more than 18.5m subscribers, the majority of whom are, unsurprisingly, children. Discussing the appeal, Ryan’s mother explained that viewers feel like they’re “on a play date with him and going on fun, pretend play adventures”.

Advertising literacy

Ryan’s channel has become a lucrative business, complete with 25 employees, including video editors, writers and production assistants. It achieved initial commercial success by allowing more traditional “pre-roll” adverts to appear before its videos, which mostly saw Ryan playing with toys – which his parents say they buy. The channel later began to embed advertising content for major brands, such as Walmart, within Ryan’s own videos. More recently, the business launched a range of Ryan’s World toys that often feature in his video content.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2019/09/25/youtubes-child-viewers-may-struggle-to-recognise-adverts/