Risks
Targeted advertising to children
Showing ads to children based on personal data, behavior, or a profile, a practice several privacy laws limit or ban for kids.
- Parents
- Policymakers and staff
- Businesses
This is general information, not legal advice.
What parents should know
Targeted advertising uses what a service knows about a person to choose the ad. When the person is a child, privacy laws put limits on that. COPPA is the federal rule families run into first, for children under 13. HeyOtto does not run ads.
On this page
What is targeted advertising to children?
An ad can be contextual, tied to the page you are on, or targeted, tied to a profile, a behavior, or an identifier. Targeted ads need data. For children under 13, COPPA treats a lot of that data as personal information and limits how operators collect and use it, including for advertising. The 2025 COPPA Rule amendments pushed further on monetizing children's data. Read the FTC rule for the current line. This page is not a substitute for it.
Teens are a separate policy fight. Some pending bills would limit individual-specific ads for teens as well. Those bills are not current law unless their own glossary pages say they are. Do not import a proposal into today's rule.
Why targeted advertising to children matters
Ads teach a child that the app is watching. They also pay for products that would otherwise need a parent to subscribe. A no-ads product makes a different bargain: the parent pays, or the free tier is limited, and the child's chat is not the product being sold.
HeyOtto's fact is simple. There are no ads. Kids' chats are not sold and are not used to train models. That is not a claim of a government certification.
How it shows up in practice
- A free kids' game shows ads chosen from play history.
- A privacy policy says advertising partners receive an identifier.
- A parent compares that with a product that has no ad slot at all.
- A pending teen-ad bill is labeled pending, not enacted.
How HeyOtto helps
Targeted advertising uses personal data to choose ads for a child. HeyOtto does not run ads, and chats are not sold for advertising. They are not used to train other models.
- There are no ads.
- Chats are not sold.
- Chats are not used to train models.
For families
Try freeFAQs
Does COPPA ban all ads to children?
COPPA regulates personal information collected from children under 13, which restricts a lot of targeted advertising. It is not a one-line ban on every contextual placement. Read the FTC rule. This is general information, not legal advice.
Does HeyOtto show ads?
No. HeyOtto does not run ads, and it does not sell kids' chats.
What about teens?
Federal COPPA is about under 13. Broader teen advertising limits show up in proposals such as the House COPPA 2.0 text, which is not law as of this page's review date.
Sources
Last reviewed September 26, 2026. Law entries are reviewed every quarter.
This is general information, not legal advice.