Online advertising impacts to kids during the pandemic
                     Online advertising impacts to kids during the 
pandemic
Watson F
Writes on ad server solutions, involved with Adspeed 
adserver software & Adspeed Ad serving software.
During the course of the pandemic, much of the conversation has been 
about the impact that it has had on businesses and their employees. We 
all tend to forget that kids, including young students, have also had a lot 
to deal with, especially since many have not been able to leave their 
home and go to school. While not having the disposable income of 
adults, kids are a growing audience many advertisers cannot afford to 
ignore because it is an opportunity to reach a new group of potential 
and future customers. Also, kids can talk their parents into buying them 
something that they have seen and want. Here are a few ways that 
online advertising has impacted kids during the pandemic.
Students staying home
While some schools have just begun to re-open, many kids are still stuck 
at home taking online classes. After-school activities have been closed 
down for over a year and will remain so for a few more months. The 
result of all this is that kids are spending more time at home and going 
through bouts of boredom. In order to stay stimulated, kids are 
watching more TV and playing more video games. This behavior benefits 
certain industries.
Increased screen time
Many parents were strict about how much time kids spend online or in 
front of a screen, but with so many activities shut down for now, parents 
are being forced to increase the screen time kids have access to. That 
means that they are seeing a lot more ads, which they might well talk to 
their parents about if they see something they like or want. Parents may 
feel forced to make those purchases to help keep their kids happy since 
better alternatives might not be available due to the lock down.
Using more online tools
With limited ability to hang out physically and offline, kids are adapted 
to communicate and socialize with friends using online social media and 
virtual meetings. Young people have always been active on social media, 
but the pandemic introduced them to many new tools, such as Zoom for 
online learning and other apps that they might otherwise never have 
used. This means that the trend for online communication will continue 
and kids could well end up being long-term users and trend setters for 
the rest of us.
More media consumption
One place where young people are spending a whole lot more time is on 
sites like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and many other video sites and apps. 
If you have spent any amount of time on those sites, you know that 
there are a lot of ads shown on a regular basis. More site traffic means 
more ad impressions. This is a great opportunity for advertisers and 
marketers to do more ad serving to reach more people. For example, 
video game makers would do well on Twitch, where a lot of users go to 
watch other people playing video games.
Vulnerable to persuasion
As much as this is a new opportunity for advertisers to get in front of a 
lot of eyes, they also need to be aware that kids and young adults are 
very open minded and thus easily influenced. All ad vendors including 
publishers, advertisers, agencies, networks, exchanges, data brokers, ad 
servers have an ethical responsibility to ensure that they are not using 
practices and tactics that might be considered somehow sneaky or 
underhanded. There needs to be a certain level of self-regulation among 
ad vendors to ensure that kids are not used or tricked solely to add sales 
or make money unethically.
About Adspeed
AdSpeed ad server is a reliable & powerful ad serving and ad 
management solution that serves your ads, tracks impressions & clicks 
and reports ad statistics in real-time. Driven by the latest ad serving 
technologies, the goal of Adspeed adserver is to provide a reliable 
platform that can help in executing online advertising strategy more 
efficiently. 
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