[HN Gopher] Social media companies made $11B in US ad revenue fr...
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Social media companies made $11B in US ad revenue from minors,
study finds
Author : belter
Score : 81 points
Date : 2023-12-29 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| superduty wrote:
| How is that revenue different than the ad revenue TV networks
| make with the wall of toy commercials during morning cartoons?
| com2kid wrote:
| I'll vouch and reply because I feel your comment may be in
| earnest.
|
| Historically, in the US, there have been strict limits on what
| ads are allowed around children's TV. There has to be a
| distinction between the TV show and the ads. For example kids
| TV shows in the US used to (not sure about now) have a _very_
| distinct break saying that the show was going to be back soon,
| indicating that what followed wasn 't part of the show.
|
| There is also a difference in that 20 years ago, if a kid
| wanted to buy a toy, they had to see an ad on TV that happened
| to be for a toy they wanted and then convince their parent to
| go to the store and buy that toy.
|
| Now with targeted ads and IAP, kids are being targeted directly
| to buy shiny goods for games that they play. Cosmetic upgrades
| in the more "honest" games that bestow social status between
| peers, or gacha tokens in pay to win games to get needed
| items/characters to progress. (And some games combine the worst
| of both!)
|
| Targeting a child with an ad for a game they play gets
| insidious _very_ quickly. "Hey Timmy, did you know all your
| friends are laughing behind your back because you don't have
| the latest and greatest armor upgrade? Better buy it now!"
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > Targeting a child with an ad for a game they play gets
| insidious very quickly. "Hey Timmy, did you know all your
| friends are laughing behind your back because you don't have
| the latest and greatest armor upgrade? Better buy it now!"
|
| _Chime Chime_ Level up! Good job!
|
| Makes In-app-purchase
|
| _Chime Chime_ Purchase completed
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| One nit, I think you mistyped about 'cosmetic upgrades' in
| pay to win games. Like you probably know, the games become
| impossibly difficult at a certain point, unless you start
| paying for tokens or whatever.
| com2kid wrote:
| Oops, you are quite correct.
|
| Though gacha mechanics have managed to combine the worst of
| both worlds. :(
| munk-a wrote:
| And every little Timmy wants the nice shiny cloak and
| character profile for their Honkai Star Rail account.
| Cosmetics and pay-to-win offerings _both_ print money.
| broscillator wrote:
| Those ads cannot cater their content and their timing towards
| your vulnerabilities based on behavior analytics, such as
| metadata indicating that you might be depressed, going through
| a breakup, etc. An app can shoot varied content at you and
| determine that if you view happy cat content, then enraging
| political discourse, then sexual stimulating content, and then
| and ad, you're more likely to click on the ad, or stare at it
| for longer, etc.
|
| Social media ads are essentially interactive, but their
| mechanics are hidden and there's no winning state for the
| player.
|
| And just to play with dark ideas: what exactly (besides
| technological limitations) would stop any of the big companies
| from basically running a long social experiment to determine
| whether, over years, you can shape a kid to become an adult
| that's a big consumer?
|
| An ad on TV has no information on who you are when you view it.
| An ad on SM has detailed information of who you were years ago,
| who you are now, and there's no reason why it can't make
| predictions about who you'll be based on the growing data. Nor
| is there a reason not to try to shape that to their benefit.
| jahewson wrote:
| > An app can shoot varied content at you and determine that
| if you view happy cat content, then enraging political
| discourse, then sexual stimulating content, and then and ad,
| you're more likely to click on the ad, or stare at it for
| longer, etc.
|
| Yeah, no. Facebook ads are mostly pay per impression, not
| click, so there's no reason to even do this. Ad targeting is
| controlled by advertisers for the most part, not algorithms -
| they want to target specific demographics, not some random
| cross-section of humanity. It's very different from the kind
| of algorithms that power your news feed.
| broscillator wrote:
| Huh? A demographic _is_ a random cross-section of humanity.
| The only thing that matters is if the way you 're
| determining the group yields more sales.
|
| The final goal is obviously a sale, but the real commodity
| is attention.
|
| I'm not saying "this is how it is", I'm saying "show my a
| reason why this is not the case now _or_ where we 're
| heading.
|
| Like, if FB _could_ do this, and it yielded more money for
| them, what would stop them? You sound very convinced, so I
| 'd be glad if you can go into detail as to what that
| conviction is founded on. Have you worked on these
| algorithms?
| hinkley wrote:
| Like a lot of things, I expect the only difference is time and
| space. There are adult generations where large swaths don't
| remember Saturday morning cartoons now. If you're a millennial
| with tech savvy parents you may have grown up with streaming
| entertainment only. Though today ads can show up there as well,
| so maybe this will be another way where children and
| grandparents bond over things the parents don't understand.
| jahewson wrote:
| > If you're a millennial with tech savvy parents you may have
| grown up with streaming entertainment only
|
| I agree, though the youngest millennials were already 11 when
| Netflix launched its streaming service. And that was just
| movies.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Minors probably respond best to ads since they're not familiar
| with the deceiving paterns of advertising. However, im not sure
| how they make money as minors usually don't have their own money,
| they'll have to aks their parents. As a parent I am terrified of
| my children falling prey to all this kind of crap as I'll have to
| pay in the end. For now Im shielding my children from advertising
| as much as I can and attempt to instill some common sense in
| them. This will not fully work at first as they'll most likely
| cave in with their peer group but hopefully they'll remember it
| later.
| com2kid wrote:
| In countries with disposable income, kids have been a huge
| market. Christmas comes every year, and so do birthdays, and
| the birthdays of friends.
|
| When I was a kid, Super Soakers printed money. Every kid wanted
| one, and the bigger the super soaker the cooler the kid.
|
| Does no one remember Tickle Me Elmo? Or Furby?
|
| Now days it may be roboblox gift cards, but the cash is still
| flowing.
| broscillator wrote:
| I suspect the numbers (adjusted for inflation) are much
| different, but it would be interesting to see this backed up.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| I do. "Jingle all the way" was hillarious and parodied that
| at that time.
| stickfigure wrote:
| $11B is a small portion of total social media advertising
| revenue, so it probably doesn't work as well as you think.
| codingdave wrote:
| If I'm reading this correctly, they made this revenue by
| displaying ads to minor audiences. Not by directly collecting
| money from minors. Which makes this statistic interesting and
| worth attention and discussion... yet also no different than any
| other marketing that kids see.
| broscillator wrote:
| Which other kinds of marketing?
|
| An ad on TV or on the highway does not have the capability of
| taking into account the network of people you follow and
| whether you have a habit of being awake at 3AM browsing posts
| about break ups.
|
| There's a constant, gradual pervasive shift towards having ads
| in more private and intimate spaces.
| codingdave wrote:
| Fair point - I was saying that making revenue from minors is
| in no way unique to social media, but you are 100% correct
| that the depth of the placement points to different
| incentives to the marketing teams who create that revenue.
|
| Turning 18 doesn't magically make those concerns go away,
| either. If anything, my takeaway is that as parents, we need
| to teach our children to critically think about the marketing
| they see while they are still minors, to avoid raising adults
| who blindly accept anything put in front of them.
| jahewson wrote:
| I guarantee you that Facebook does not have an audience of
| "people who stay up until 3am" available for advertisers to
| target.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd be quite willing to take this wager - it might not be
| something they readily offer but I'm pretty certain if
| someone asked their data scientists to pull together such a
| demographic they could manage it with ease.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| People were targeting scam medical treatments and useless
| kitchen appliances to this demographic on television in my
| childhood, so I would almost guarantee that they do.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You can set age and times to target + interest. So you're
| wrong here
| madrox wrote:
| When I was a minor in the 80s and 90s, I had unskippable
| 30-60 second ads called commercials that targeted me during
| my cartoons (breakfast cereal and toys I could pester my
| parents to buy me) and, when I got older, MTV and magazines.
| Part of it was self selection (I started reading gaming
| magazines, so saw full page gaming ads). These publishers
| knew who I was through my subscription.
|
| Sure, the segments were broader, but culture was homogenous
| by necessity. You didn't see the cultural divergence of today
| that the internet (and targeting) have enabled.
|
| I think the mechanics of targeting have changed, but we're
| fooling ourselves if we think we haven't had "targeted" ads
| for a long while before the internet took over.
| squigz wrote:
| I really don't think the commenter you're replying to was
| implying we haven't had targeted advertising for a while,
| but rather that the issue is _how_ targeted it 's getting.
| broscillator wrote:
| It's kind of like comparing a random person throwing a rock
| trying to hit you, vs a professional sniper with the most
| advanced scope and powerful rifle.
| paxys wrote:
| Is that really something that needs to be clarified? People in
| general know that social media companies make money through
| advertising, not by directly charging their users.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I see that as eleven billion dollars of damage done to the mental
| health of children.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| I don't. wouldn't the ad itself have to be harmful to mental
| health?
|
| maybe if it was for plastic surgery. or if Kim K did a
| sponsored post for diet tea
| hanniabu wrote:
| brain rot
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > wouldn't the ad itself have to be harmful to mental health?
|
| No, the mere presence of the advertisement is sufficient harm
| to a person without capacity to understand the difference
| between what they need, what they want, and what other people
| want of them.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| I'm certainly against ads, but I'm not convinced that an ad
| is inherently damaging to mental health.
|
| seeing an ad for 5 gum probably won't harm a developing
| teen. seeing a celebrity live a lifestyle you will never
| have and look 'better' than you ever will might.
|
| though using revanced and the IG equivalent certainly is a
| QoL improvement, but I don't think my doctor will prescribe
| pihole to improve my mental health
| munk-a wrote:
| At this point I'm pretty convinced that ads are damaging
| to mental health (at least the ones we see today). Modern
| advertising normalizes consumerism, drives down our
| attention span, and overloads us with blinking lights and
| exciting sounds causing us to, IMO, existing in a much
| higher general state of stress than previous generations.
|
| I'm no mental health professional but I suspect this
| period of advertising will be looked back on in a similar
| way to leeching and leaded gasoline.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| the potential is there but everything said could also be
| said about a generic post on IG or a sponsored post which
| is a different type of ad not tracked here. IG is a
| cesspool but not because of the ads. look at a generic
| reels post and view the comments
| dahart wrote:
| That's what parent is saying: ads are harmful to mental
| health.
|
| This isn't a new idea, and there is some evidence to back it
| up.
|
| https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002224298605000.
| ..
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/4189139
|
| https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a.
| ..
|
| Lots of people have also come up with long lists of ways that
| ads that seem innocuous for children still do damage over
| time.
|
| https://www.momjunction.com/articles/negative-side-
| effects-o...
|
| https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-
| life/Media/Pa...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Thanks. Interesting resources I appreciate.
| lebean wrote:
| Sure, if you equate an ad for a new Mario game for Nintendo
| Switch with deceptive mobile game ads featuring pregnant
| Spiderman and Elsa in sexually charged poses, I can see that.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Either way, the advertiser is poking the brain chemistry of
| the viewer. Obviously there are degrees of bad.
| Kamq wrote:
| That seems like it would require the damage done to be
| equivalent to the cost of an ad (which can fluctuate wildly).
|
| That seems unlikely. I'm not going to get into if it would be
| higher or lower, but both of those seem way more likely than
| equivalency.
| csa wrote:
| > I see that as eleven billion dollars of damage done to the
| mental health of children.
|
| I will take the over on that number.
|
| I will also suggest that the number is even larger for a
| similarly-sized cohort of working adults (especially younger
| working adults).
| hinkley wrote:
| It's like nobody remembers Saturday morning cartoons.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| The tv didn't track your movement through stores and websites
| and our other online activities.
| hinkley wrote:
| They didn't bother. They just carpet bombed everyone.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Only because it was technically impossible, not because they
| had good ethics.
| duringmath wrote:
| They used census data to estimate the number of users under 18.
|
| This is just BS PR from probably the least reliable kind of
| researcher, the social science crowd.
| internetter wrote:
| I'm shocked this number isn't higher. Are you telling me that
| only fraction (because not all of that 11B was made on facebook
| property) of facebook's 116.6 yearly income is from one of the
| most avid groups of social media users?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _one of the most avid groups of social media users?_
|
| Are they spending much?
| internetter wrote:
| Social media companies don't make much profit on selling
| stuff to users. They make profit on advertisements. If what
| you're saying is that younger folks see less advertisements
| because they buy less things, I can assure you that is not
| the case.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Anecdotal, but my Gen Z and his friends abhor and avoid FB/IG
| like the plague. From my perspective, FB is rapidly losing the
| interests of the younger generations and increasingly looking
| like a right-wing retirement community.
|
| Do we have a reliable source of user data that shows the
| breakdown of each social media platform by age group?
| internetter wrote:
| I agree FB is unused among GenZ, but in my anecdotal
| experience Instagram (and to a lesser extent, threads)
| continues to be relevant, alongside Snap and TikTok.
|
| Heck, let's run with TikTok for a second, ByteDance made 110
| billion[0] this year. Does anybody use TikTok more than GenZ?
|
| [0]:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-20/tiktok-
| ow...
|
| Edit: Also, IG seems more popular among girls, which could
| explain the opinion of your kid. I found an article from pew
| to corroborate this that also shows that IG is very much
| still relevant:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-
| and...
| chopete3 wrote:
| I tried multiple ways (brave browser,paid youtube account,paid
| games etc.,) to prevent kids from ads online but it is hard.
| There are ads embedded in videos and links that take them to ad
| sites.
|
| I am now training them on how to recognize ads and scams faster.
| It is fun watch a 6 year old say all free Robux offers are ads
| and don't click on the link.
|
| All energy drinks are sugar water Caffeine is bad for health
| People who drink those are addicts
|
| If online exposure is hard from 5 years or above, there should be
| some level of ads education from 5 years itself.
| blfr wrote:
| Between uBlock in the browser, ReVanced apps[1] (YouTube,
| Twitter/X, TikTok), DNS ad filtering[2], and Spotify Premium, I
| don't see ads. It takes some effort but isn't that hard for an
| HN poster.
|
| Also, I'm quite skeptical of caffeine and aspartame being bad
| for health (in adults at least).
|
| [1] https://revanced.app/
|
| [2] https://mullvad.net/pl/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-
| tls#...
| google234123 wrote:
| So why Spotify premium and not YT premium?
| varispeed wrote:
| I have problems with my partner. She keeps falling for these
| scams and it is so tedious explaining to her why I think
| something is a scam (usually various coach programmes, how to
| get wealthy and so on) and often times scammers use quite
| clever manipulation techniques, so that she believes them more
| than myself. She gets upset and say "everything is a scam to
| you!" and I say "no, it happens that you are being attracted to
| these kind of offers and so the Facebook / whatever algorithms
| keep pushing more of these at you". She goes "you just don't
| want me to succeed in life!" and so on. She even got to some
| (probably a cult) meeting telling her how she could invest her
| money without paying tax. When I told her that these things are
| illegal and not going to work, she says that I am just stupid
| and everyone does it. Then I showed her analysis of one of such
| schemes done by a reputable accountant, she says that it's just
| a smear campaign. It's so so exhausting. I wish advertising was
| more regulated. I am probably going to install some sort of ad
| blocking on the network level. Does anyone know about good
| PiHole tutorial? How can I hook it up to the router?
|
| I also been thinking about contacting Trading Standards, but I
| have a feeling they are not doing anything about it.
| Technically those scams are not illegal in the UK. Anyone can
| pretend to be an adviser and they can sell any sort of pie in
| the sky schemes without bearing any liability.
| Frivolous9421 wrote:
| Jesus dude just leave
| Melatonic wrote:
| I do not have kids but the education first approach always
| sounds like the best one
|
| That being said NextDNS is pretty awesome and will get a ton of
| it (plus has other features great for kids) and can be
| installed on any iOS device using a Profile (no local VPN
| needed). On Android you can simply use the built in OS DNS
| feature. And of course it's easy on Windows and MacOS as well.
|
| That combined with either Orion browser (either using the built
| in blocking or installing Firefox Ublock in Orion) is pretty
| damn good on iOS. On Android or Windows then Firefox plus
| Ublock Origin is also an awesome combo.
|
| This won't block the inline YouTube ads but you could of course
| pay for YT premium or find other ways around it. And Spotify
| family at 15$ is not a bad deal to get 5 people no add full
| premium for music.
| sphars wrote:
| +1 to using NextDNS. I'm using it on my home network and it
| has worked quite well. I also use it as my DNS on my Android
| devices and covers mobile networks too, which is why I
| switched from a PiHole.
|
| It does struggle at times where something is blocked and
| needs to be on the allowlist for a website to work, but I
| blame this more on the website rather than NextDNS (mostly
| affiliate links).
| riversflow wrote:
| > Caffeine is bad for health People who drink those are addicts
|
| Imagine teaching your kids intolerance based on pseudo-science.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I just think it's crazy a six year old is even on a device
| instead of being a six year old playing and what not. I was
| writing code at 11 but the only screens I was on until double
| digits was playing video games a few hours a week under
| parental supervision. Even that didn't start until I was 7
| bdcravens wrote:
| In related news, grocery stores still have candy in the checkout
| aisles.
| morkalork wrote:
| I fall for this one more as an adult who's shopping while
| completely crashed and still needs to drive home and cook
| dinner.
| CM30 wrote:
| This is sadly not too surprising; a quick glance at what does
| well on YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, etc will show that a high
| percentage of the userbase are probably under 13, and that
| percentage probably jumps even more when counting minors in
| general.
|
| Given that:
|
| 1. Many parents see giving their kids an iPad and access to a
| social media service as a way to keep them quiet 2. And pretty
| much every kid on the planet will lie about their age in order to
| sign up for whatever site or service they want
|
| I'm not sure there's a whole lot these services could do about
| it, and any attempt to fix this would probably make them even
| more privacy invasive and obnoxious than they already are.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad simply said "no" to all the stuff I wanted to buy as a
| kid. But I could buy it if I earned the money first. (No
| allowance) I'd have to wait for Christmas or birthday to get new
| toys.
|
| I suppose these days that would be considered child abuse :-/
| bnprks wrote:
| Reading the methodology of the underlying paper makes this
| estimate seem quite dubious. Quoting from the paper [1]:
|
| > Due to lack of data, we assumed that revenue per minute of
| platform use was constant by age.
|
| Surely ad rates targeting minors without disposable income are
| much lower than for age demographics with higher spending power.
|
| I'm happy to have an excuse to discuss our opinions on the ethics
| of social media use by minors, but I'd appreciate if the
| "science" was a little more forthright about what we know and
| don't know.
|
| In this case the paper seems to make a reasonable estimate of the
| fraction of total social media usage time spent by minors. But
| it's sloppy bordering on dishonest to extrapolate that to revenue
| numbers without looking at any data on ad pricing.
|
| [1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295337
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