Technology, powered by a blend of AI and manual reviews by educators, reveals ~400 likely child-directed apps with programmatic ads across Roku and Amazon Fire TV, all of which share location information with advertisers and/or data brokers.

Pixalate, the market-leading fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform for Connected TV (CTV) and Mobile Advertising, announced the launch of the ad industry’s first Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) compliance toolkit for CTV to identify and assess child-directed apps across the Roku and Amazon Fire TV app stores.

Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board, composed of qualified educators and led by a former FTC enforcer, manually reviews and assesses whether apps are child-directed through the lens of the COPPA Rule. These manual reviews to determine the likely target audience are blended with AI to assign a COPPA violation risk to 50k+ Roku and Amazon Fire CTV apps.

Publishers and advertisers who are aware that a CTV app is child-directed are required to comply with COPPA, including obtaining parental consent before collecting and/or sharing personal information. The app operator must also have a privacy policy which discloses certain things including what information the operator collects from children.

Pixalate now offers rankings of the most popular child-directed CTV apps in both the Roku and Amazon Fire TV stores within its Publisher Rankings. Users can see whether or not an app has a detected privacy policy or transmits location data or residential IP address.

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In its Q4 2022 CTV Roku vs. Amazon: COPPA Risk Scorecard Report, Pixalate found:

• ~400 likely child-directed* apps with programmatic ads across Roku and Amazon Fire stores as of Q3 2022.
• 13% of CTV likely child-directed apps with programmatic ads in the Roku Store; 8% on the Amazon Fire TV Store.
• 6% of likely child-directed CTV apps with programmatic ads have no detected privacy policy as of Q3 2022.
• 100% of likely child-directed CTV apps with programmatic ads on Roku transmit GPS or Residential IP in the ad bidstream.
• 7x more ad spend on likely general audience CTV apps vs. likely child-directed CTV apps.

“As advertisers are focusing more on programmatic Connected TV inventory, it is important for them to keep in mind that COPPA also applies in the CTV space. Identifying which apps are child-directed and whether they are potentially risky from a COPPA compliance standpoint is crucial in avoiding hefty penalties,” said Pixalate’s Senior Vice President of Public Policy, Ads Privacy and COPPA Compliance Allison Lefrak.

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