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Webkinz Gets Spanking For Showing Ads

Written on

Dec 13, 2007 

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Sarah Novotny  |

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Webkinz Gets Spanking For Showing Ads

Children are becoming more and more sophisticated. However, this also makes them likelier targets for marketers. Children, specifically the “tween” demographic are known to have the largest amount of disposable income of anyone else in the world. So it’s no wonder that advertisers are chomping at the bit to market towards this group of people. But what kind of responsibility do popular kids’ sites have in monitoring or flat-out not showing ads?

Recently we republished a story from The New York Times about the appropriate nature of advertising on popular children’s’ sites. Many of the sites in question were also known to be popular adult sites as well. However, this time the site getting the bad press is a virtual world called Webkinz.com. The site offers kids, who buy Webkinz stuffed animals entry to the world where they can decorate virtual rooms, take trivia quizzes and message their friends.

The cost of the stuffed animal also pays the subscription to the “ad-free” site with an accompanying access code.  The site’s traffic has grown over 800% over the past year, with 7.29 million unique users in October.

That same month, the site started running ads for upcoming children’s movies such as “Bee Movie” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” The ads have been on the home page according to The New York Times. Advocacy group “The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” has been demanding the ads be taken down.

The campaign’s director Susan Linn said to TNYT “One of the reasons why parents buy Webkinz for their children is the expectation that the site will be free from advertising. It’s disappointing that the site is choosing to maximize revenue at the expense of children.” Angry parents have posted blogs and have threatened to stop buying the products due to this breach of trust. The race for online ad revenue continues to speed up, but are there companies who owe it to their users to withdraw from the race?

Tags: ad-free-sites, children, movie-trailers, privacy, subscriptions and webkinz

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