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“Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

developer.apple.com

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Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#11

Post by lallysingh »

joshstrange wrote: post #2

Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area beh…

Yup, and parents can just install one of the Kids-Category clones of candy crush that will inevitably show up.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#12

Post by pnutjam »

That's great, except there is no way to create a "kids" account without another apple device.

My kids school won't participate in the program to create kids accounts for schools, and I don't own other apple devices. So on my rented ipad, the only option is to create a 13+ year old account (for my kindergartner). So now that she's in 2nd grade, apple thinks she's 16.

I've complained about this endlessly to the school, and talked to a couple lawyers. Apparently there is no legal issue because I have to create the accounts, so they are my accounts. I'm just letting my kid use them.

So... apple sucks, give us a web-ui for creating child accounts. I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#14

Post by move-on-by »

joshstrange wrote: post #2

Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area beh…

> Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category.

I love this. You can't just follow kids guidelines to build up your user-base and then drop it in favor of ads and analytics. Once you follow it, you have to continue to follow it.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#15

Post by mithr »

criddell wrote: post #3
joshstrange wrote: post #2

Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area beh…

Why do they ban third-party advertising in particular? It seems like advertising should be allowed as long as it's display only with no outward information flow. Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed.

In general, I believe it's based on the belief that children in partiular don't yet have the necessary mental tools to be able to properly analyze content -- basically, that they're influenced by media to a much higher degree than adults.

> Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed

I would guess that proponents of this approach also feel that the contents of TV/magazine ads should be strictly controlled (and probably they are -- I'm not sure what the exact regulations around these are, but I am sure it's much harder to publish a blatantly misleading magazine or TV ad, without consequences to the advertiser or the network/magazine, than it is to publish one online).

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#17

Post by Spooks »

chillydawg wrote: post #4

If I were apple I'd extend the definition of a kids app as any app thats userbase is kids by majority. Not sure how to enforce or detect that, though!

This seems more like an opt in choice for developers of the app as opposed to forcing apps to the kids section (which as you stated would be impossible to manage)

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#18

Post by lotu »

criddell wrote: post #3
joshstrange wrote: post #2

Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area beh…

Why do they ban third-party advertising in particular? It seems like advertising should be allowed as long as it's display only with no outward information flow. Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed.

I'm interpreting this as third party targeting, not that you can't use a third party handle the process of targeting, serving, and billing ads.

If they are saying that the game company has to have their own ad platform that basically means only Google and Facebook will be able to release ad supported child targeted games on iOS in the future, which doesn't really make any sense to me.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#19

Post by Townley »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #7

Are first party ads better for kids?

I think so. Among other reasons, those ads were deliberately included in the app by the people who created it (and now have explicit responsibility over the content of those ads).

Since parents trusted those creators enough to give the app to their children, that's something.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#20

Post by robbrown451 »

Is this a new change? What is the backstory on this?

And how is "third party" defined? Sounds easy to game by having it only directly communicate with the server of the app developer, and having it completely impossible for Apple to tell whether or not they are then communicating with a third party service.

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