There is a story in the Chicago Tribune about the National Rifle Association’s four-fold increase in advertising in the days after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The article uses information from online advertising tracker Pathmatics, who included this but of NRA “cold-dead-hands” approach to advertisement targeting.
Case in point, one of the YouTube channels where the advertisements have been running is called Kid’s Toys, which has video playlists of kids unboxing toys and dolls. Pathmatics found an NRA ad running before a video of a young girl unboxing a doll from Disney’s popular “Doc McStuffins” show. According to Pathmatics, these ads were not targeted necessarily to gun owners. Anyone of any age could have seen them. The objectives appear to be to drive membership, as Pathmatics’ data show the ad material was created before the shooting. YouTube wasn’t the only youthful site displaying NRA material: Pathmatics’ data show there was an NRA display ad on comicbook.com, a site that covers comics, gaming and anime.
Why is this happening? Because anybody and everybody knows we are a consumer culture and we need to make sure that as our consumers become older, we replenish them with younger, newer earning, consumers.
Digital ads are generally more flexible and responsive to events in the news than traditional television or radio ads, said Franz. The Wesleyan Media Project released a study last week showing that references to guns in political ads has been increasing since 2012. “The NRA seems to be doing something a little differently with its digital outreach,” said Franz. “Digital content is easier – and faster — to produce.”
There hasn’t been much research comparing the ways that kids and adults respond to online advertisements, but efforts to reach children are ramping up. The kids digital advertising market is expected to hit $1.2 billion and represent 28 percent of all advertising directed at kids, according to a report by accounting firm PwC.
As the Violence Policy Center explains, the NRA is just following in the footsteps of another great public health antagonist, the tobacco industry—and it’s been going on since at least the early 1990s.
- A 1993 issue of NSSF’s SHOT Business raises the question, “Kids can’t buy guns, you say? Well, yes and no. It’s true that most students from kindergarten through high school can’t purchase firearms on their own. But it’s also true that in many parts of the country, youngsters (from preteens on up) are shooting and hunting. Pop picks up the tab.”5
- In answer to the question, “How old is old enough?” the NSSF pamphlet When Your Youngster Wants a Gun… (distributed by the organization up until 1994) responds: “Age is not the major yardstick. Some youngsters are ready to start at 10, others at 14. The only real measures are those of maturity and individual responsibility. Does your youngster follow directions well? Is he conscientious and reliable? Would you leave him alone in the house for two or three hours? Would you send him to the grocery store with a list and a $20 bill? If the answer to these questions or similar ones are `yes,’ then the answer can also be `yes’ when your child asks for his first gun.”
Here are some other questions to ask:
Would you let your “youngster” drive an infant in a car, on a highway? Would you let your “youngster” cook a meal using both the oven and the stovetop, while you left for an hour or so to go shopping? Remember how your “youngster” threw a fit because he was overtired after having a fun day and then cried for fifteen minute and pushed his little sibling over? He’s probably ready for a gun.
The Tribune explains that there is not much in the way of FCC regulation when it comes to online video advertising. And while some senators make a show of trying to regulate online political campaign ads that are completely bogus, what our children can see is still up in the air, and has mostly been regulated by parents and watchdogs hounding companies to do the right thing—something that big companies have a hard time actually doing.
YouTube Kids, the child-friendly version of YouTube’s service that launched last year and faced criticism for the way it handled advertisements, has today launched a version of the service that will offer parents the option to pay for an ad-free experience. Now, YouTube Kids will be bundled into the YouTube Red subscription program, a paid membership that offers a variety of features, including offline videos, background play and no paid ads.
Yay! Wrong.
Removing paid advertisements from YouTube Kids by paying for a subscription doesn’t fully address the complaints some consumer watchdog organizations had with this children’s app. The issue was never really the paid, disclosed ads that appeared on the service. It was the subtler, paid endorsements that YouTube video creators didn’t disclose. It was the fact that kids could surface actual TV commercials when searching for a generic keyword, like “cookies,” and this wouldn’t be subject to YouTube’s paid advertisement guidelines.
It was the fact that big-name advertisers like Coca-Cola, GM, Oreo, Kellogg and others broke the pledge they made as members of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) to not serve ads to kids under 12, but skirted around this promise by way of using YouTube. On YouTube, they could again offer their TV commercials to young audiences, along with product placements and other promotional videos.
Of course, the NRA pushing on advertising to kids makes Oreos seem like brain food.
- Writing in Junior Shooters magazine, 12-year-old Casey Lutz is featured with a pink CZ bolt-action youth rifle. Says Lutz: “When my dad brought home the gun, a CZ 452 Scout, chambered in 22 long rifle, I was excited to see that the gun was pink! My first thought was, ‘Finally, a cool gun for a girl!’ It’s nice to see that companies like CZ make guns specifically for young women shooters. The second thing I noticed was the gun was small and compact and was designed to fit kids.” [...]
- Savage Arms’ youth rifle, the Rascal, presents the gun in child-friendly colors: red, yellow, orange, pink, and blue. In an ad for the youth rifle, the company promises that the firearms deliver “ONE SHOT, ONE THRILL !”
- On its website, featuring assault rifles “built by Americans, for Americans,” Black Forge Weapons offers “Youth Model” AR-15 assault rifles that come in orange, violet, green, blue, and red.
My daughter is partial to purple, my son is partial to blue and green, but they both have fights about orange and occasionally when my son is being kind of a jerk with his sister he will fight with her about purple. My guess is that if they just had their own “favorite” colored guns, that would all work itself out; because little kids are really good at impulse control!