Age Policies at YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and continually looks
for more ways to monetize the site and carry advertisements in new places and
for new industries. As a part of Google now (acquired by the search giant in
2006) YouTube has also begun to revamp the way that the video site is handling
advertisements from online casinos and internet gambling companies. In the past
several years Google has opened up its policies regarding the online casino
sites so that these companies can now place adverts on certain keywords – a
practices that was completely blocked for years. As Google liberalizes it’s
policies, however, YouTube is following suite, particularly now that new age
identification software is available and works incredibly well according to
Google.
YouTube and Google claim that the new online casino advertisements on certain
videos and places throughout the site will not be shown to the under 18 users
and instead will appear only on content for the legal adults. The age checking
software that will run the new adverts for online casinos and betting sites is
the same process that is in place to keep children and under 18 users from
accessing the more explicit content that is actually available on YouTube. That
means that although internet gambling sites will now have the rights to
advertise on the network their exposure throughout the site will really only
correspond to adult video content that has already been labeled as such and
blocked from the underage viewers.
There are certainly skeptics in the marketplace who feel like these age blocks
are not strong enough to actually keep underage YouTube viewers from seeing the
online casino adverts, but YouTube has continually proven that the site’s
methods are quite effective in determining the age of the viewer and then
blocking inappropriate content as needed. |