children’s data privacy

Efforts to police children’s data online are running up against the limits of decades-old privacy laws, such as COPPA.

For most of the last decade, privacy compliance lived in a gray zone. Companies could point to a cookie banner, update a policy and reasonably believe they were doing enough. Not anymore.

What’s one data privacy shift or regulation that will most reshape digital advertising in 2026 – and who will be most unprepared for it?

Keeping American kids safe in what FTC Commissioner Mark Meador calls “an increasingly complex and fast-paced technological environment” is a top priority for the agency.

AI-generated mystery pages are appearing on brand sites; Amazon Prime Video doubles its ad load; and bipartisan efforts to protect kids online get a new partisan focus under the Trump admin.

The FTC’s latest staff report has strong message for social media and streaming video platforms: Stop engaging in the “vast surveillance” of consumers.

New requirements with respect to the processing of children’s data are occurring at the U.S. state level and seemingly flying below the radar. Here’s how these changes could impact targeted advertising in the United States.

Lawmakers are busy playing politics, and it’s getting in the way of creating safety guardrails for children’s privacy online.

Contextual targeting today is way more advanced than what was available a decade ago. So, what could the FTC’s COPPA Rule proposal mean for contextual advertising to kids?

In 2023, supply-path optimization took off, brands took their scalpels to made-for-advertising websites and DSPs and SSPs launched SPO products to cut down on hops. Plus: lessons from the year in data privacy.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

The FTC is proposing a series of modifications to its 2020 consent decree with Facebook (from the pre-Meta days) that would have a tremendous impact on how the company does business – including a “blanket prohibition” against monetizing the data of children under 18 across all of Meta’s services.

There’s been talk about raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Dona Fraser, SVP of privacy initiatives at BBB National Programs, weighs in.

It’s a resolution of mine to start using the word “people” more often than the word “consumer.” People are more than just what they consume.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Sign Of The Times The New York Times beat expectations for Q4 2022 thanks to a strong subscription bundling push, according to its earnings report. But digital ad revenue was only up a smidge. The Times added 240,000 net digital subscribers in […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disconnecticut Connecticut has become the fifth state to pass a data privacy law. The Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA), effective July 2023, follows in the footsteps of California, Colorado, Virginia and Utah in setting statewide safety rails around consumer data collection. Like its predecessors, […]

The internet needs child-safety guardrails, but lawmakers are hawking bills that could distract from the danger of widespread data collection and advertising targeted at children. The EARN IT Act is one of them. It purports to eliminate child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, but privacy advocates say it’s unlikely to do so because its real function is just to hobble Big Tech.