Advertising on Children’s Sites

Stephen Dulaney points out PrimaryGames, a game site for children, and observes

They seem to be selling a range of banner ads, kind of cool to see a site that is so much fun being able to get revenue from web advertising.

I don’t approve of advertising to children. Jakob Nielsen observed that children click on advertisements more than adults, because they have not learned to distinguish them from the other things on the page. The Big Sister gets very upset when she clicks on something and it’s not part of the game at Playhouse Disney. They are clearly labeled as ads, and, to me, it’s apparent that they are, but to her they are confusing accidents. Disney is very lucky that she has not transferred her dislike from the accident to Disney products.

The advertisements on PrimaryGames are for the parents, not the children, include pop-ups, interstitials, slow the pages’ loading, and distract from the games. Are there any places on-line which are just for kids?

3 Comments

  1. Apparently Tomy does not care to maintain their brand or a quality experience for their customers, as they have let the domain registrations for micro-pets.com and micropets.com lapse. The former displays an under-construction banner, but may eventually contain something you wouldn’t want your kids to see. The latter is completely off the net: their name servers are dead.

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