The policy requires publishers operating child-directed websites to disable interest-based advertising and remarketing for those sites and to comply with applicable children's privacy laws, including the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
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This provision establishes an affirmative publisher obligation to identify child-directed content and configure ad serving accordingly, with failure to do so creating both AdSense policy violations and potential regulatory exposure under COPPA and equivalent laws.
Under this clause, publishers who operate sites that attract or are directed at users under 13 must configure their AdSense settings to serve only non-personalized ads on those properties. The agreement requires publishers to self-identify child-directed content and implement the appropriate ad serving configuration.
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"Publishers with child-directed sites must not use interest-based advertising or remarketing to serve ads to users. Sites directed at children must comply with applicable children's privacy laws including COPPA.— Excerpt from Google Ads's Google AdSense Program Policies
(1) REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: This provision directly engages COPPA, which prohibits the collection of personal data from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent; the FTC is the primary COPPA enforcement authority. Equivalent protections apply under GDPR Article 8 for EU children and under the UK Children's Code administered by the ICO. The FTC has issued enforcement actions against platforms that failed to identify and appropriately configure child-directed properties. (2) GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: High for publishers in the education, entertainment, gaming, or family content sectors. Misclassification of a child-directed property as general audience, resulting in interest-based advertising being served to minors, creates concurrent exposure to FTC enforcement and Google account termination. (3) JURISDICTION FLAGS: EU publishers must apply GDPR Article 8 age of consent requirements, which vary by member state between 13 and 16 years. UK publishers are subject to the ICO's Children's Code (Age Appropriate Design Code), which imposes standards beyond basic consent requirements for online services likely to be accessed by minors. (4) CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: Publishers using third-party content platforms, game engines, or educational tools on child-directed sites should verify that those integrations do not introduce ad serving or data collection mechanisms that conflict with COPPA obligations or this AdSense policy provision. (5) COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Publishers should conduct a content audience assessment across their entire site portfolio to identify any properties that qualify as child-directed under COPPA definitions, configure those properties in AdSense using the child-directed setting, and maintain documentation of that determination process.
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This provision establishes an affirmative publisher obligation to identify child-directed content and configure ad serving accordingly, with failure to do so creating both AdSense policy violations and potential regulatory exposure under COPPA and equivalent laws.
Under this clause, publishers who operate sites that attract or are directed at users under 13 must configure their AdSense settings to serve only non-personalized ads on those properties. The agreement requires publishers to self-identify child-directed content and implement the appropriate ad serving configuration.
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