Online Marketing Strategies

Online advertisers use many methods to try and get kids to buy their products. Often, they blend advertising with activities and games on the Internet so that kids don't even recognize that they're being sold to. Next time you're on a commercial kids' site, see if you can spot any of these techniques.

Some marketing techniques, like Banner Ads, are pretty obvious:

Others are more subtle.

Imagine a giant commercial that kids can enter, where they can talk and play with products and product spokescharacters. Imagine a commercial that gives marketers access to information about specific kids, including their inner-most dreams and desires. This is what the Internet offers advertisers through commercial Web sites.

Here are some of the methods used by advertisers to involve kids with their products:

The creation of virtual environments that make kids feel as if they are entering an actual place.

Look for words like world, village, town, clubhouse, and planet. Companies want children to feel that this is not a commercial - it's a special world that's been created just for them. Some Web sites ask children to submit their names before entering a site, in order to provide them with personalized greetings when they return.

Friendly, cartoon "spokescharacters" that encourage kids to identify with with products and companies. Advertisers are hoping that brand recognition at a young age will evolve into life-long brand loyalty.

Interactive games and activities like colouring pages, crossword puzzles and word searches featuring brand-name products and their spokescharacters.

Traditional advertisements don't work on the Internet, so advertisers seamlessly blend advertising content with games and activities.

Clubs that kids can join and contests they can enter to win prizes. (Many of the prizes that are offered feature product logos, slogans or characters.)

Often, kids are asked to give out personal information like their names, e-mail and home addresses, phone numbers and preferences before they can join clubs, enter contests or play games. This gives marketers the ability to solicit kids through email, build user profiles of kids who visit the site, sell information about kids to third parties and make the advertising on their Web site even more effective!

The bottom line? Recognize when you're being sold to. Commercial sites are lots of fun, but they exist to make money. When you visit commercial kids' sites, see how many online marketing methods you can spot.