Federal child advertising laws come from two agencies working different sides of the same problem. The Federal Trade Commission enforces the FTC Act against deceptive ads aimed at kids and enforces the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) against websites, apps, and games that collect data from children under 13. The Federal Communications Commission enforces the Children’s Television Act of 1990, which caps how many minutes of commercials can run during children’s programming. Civil penalties reach $53,088 per violation and, in the largest case on record, total relief has crossed half a billion dollars.
How the FTC Judges Ads Aimed at Children
The FTC Act makes unfair or deceptive commercial practices unlawful and gives the agency power to stop them.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 45 – Unfair Methods of Competition Unlawful When the audience is a child, the standard tightens. Instead of asking whether a reasonable adult would be misled, the FTC asks whether a child would be. Kids lack the experience to see a sales pitch coming and tend to take exaggerated claims at face value.
That shift changes what advertisers can do. A commercial cannot show a toy helicopter soaring for thirty seconds if the real product glides for three. Performance claims need evidence, and the FTC weighs that evidence against how a child would read the ad. Disclosures like “batteries not included” or “each sold separately” have to be clear enough for a young viewer to catch, not buried in fine print or blurred into a fast voiceover at the end.
The agency also treats certain persuasion tactics as unfair. Ads suggesting a child will be excluded or disliked unless they own a product cross the line. So do techniques that blur entertainment and selling, such as using a cartoon character from a show to pitch products during that same show, because young children cannot tell where the story ends and the commercial begins.
COPPA and Kids’ Data Online
COPPA governs how online services handle information from children under 13.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6501 – Definitions It applies to any online service designed for that age group, and to general-audience services that know they are collecting information from a child. Its reach covers websites, mobile apps, connected toys, and any internet-enabled platform where a child might interact.
What Counts as Personal Information
The statute covers a child’s first and last name, home address, email address, telephone number, and Social Security number.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6501 – Definitions The FTC’s implementing rule adds persistent identifiers that can track a child across websites or devices, including cookies, IP addresses, and device serial numbers.3eCFR. 16 CFR Part 312 – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule Photos, videos, voice recordings, and precise geolocation are also covered.
That broad definition is what makes COPPA reshape the ad industry, not just the privacy industry. Behavioral advertising, retargeting, and user profiling all run on persistent identifiers. On a child-directed service, using them for ads triggers the consent obligation.
Notice and Verifiable Parental Consent
Before collecting personal information from a child, an operator must post clear notice of what it collects, how it uses the data, and whether it shares the information with third parties. The notice must be prominent and written in plain language.4eCFR. 16 CFR 312.4 – Notice Direct notice must also go to the parent.
The core requirement is verifiable parental consent before collecting, using, or sharing a child’s personal information.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6502 – Regulation of Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices The FTC’s rule sets out accepted methods for confirming the consent actually came from a parent: signed forms returned by mail, fax, or scan; payment-card verification; a call or video conference with trained personnel; a government ID check with prompt deletion; or dynamic knowledge-based questions difficult enough that a child could not guess the answers. A simpler email-plus-confirmation method is allowed when the operator does not share the child’s data with outside parties.6eCFR. 16 CFR 312.5 – Parental Consent
Consent is not the end of it. Parents can ask for a description of what has been collected, refuse further collection or use, and obtain the data the operator holds.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6502 – Regulation of Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices Operators cannot condition a child’s participation in a game or contest on handing over more information than the activity actually requires.
Commercial Time Limits on Children’s Television
The Children’s Television Act of 1990 tells the FCC to cap advertising during programming aimed at children 12 and under. The ceiling is 10.5 minutes of commercial time per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 303a – Standards for Children’s Television Programming The FCC applied the same limits to cable operators by parallel regulation, and satellite providers fall under the same restrictions.8eCFR. 47 CFR 76.225 – Commercial Limits in Children’s Programs
Beyond minutes, the rules require program content to be clearly separated from commercials by unrelated intervening material, so a young child can tell when the show pauses and the ads begin.9Federal Communications Commission. Children’s Educational Television Broadcasters, cable operators, and satellite providers also cannot display website addresses during or next to a children’s program when those sites sell products featuring a character from the program. That rule stops what would otherwise be an extended commercial dressed up as show content.
Apps, Games, and Deceptive Design
Children’s media has moved to apps, online games, and streaming, and enforcement has followed. Because COPPA covers apps the same way it covers websites, any child-directed app that collects persistent identifiers for advertising needs parental consent first. Obtaining verified consent for every ad impression is not practical at scale, which is why behavioral advertising is largely absent from children’s apps.
The FTC has also treated deceptive design as its own violation. Some apps marketed as free or ad-free push children toward paid features through interfaces where a tap triggers a purchase without clearly signaling that money is being spent.10Federal Trade Commission. What to Know About Kids and Video Games, Ads, and Unexpected Payments The 2022 action against Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, produced a $275 million penalty for COPPA violations alone and $520 million in total relief, once allegations of design tricks that triggered unintentional purchases were included.11Federal Trade Commission. Fortnite Video Game Maker Epic Games to Pay More Than Half a Billion Dollars Over FTC Allegations
Penalties and Enforcement
The FTC handles COPPA and deceptive-advertising cases; the FCC handles television commercial limits and separation. When the FTC finds a violation, it can issue a complaint and, after proceedings, order the company to stop.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 45 – Unfair Methods of Competition Unlawful
Civil penalties for knowing violations of FTC rules, including the COPPA Rule, currently sit at $53,088 per violation and are adjusted annually for inflation.12Federal Register. Adjustments to Civil Penalty Amounts Each instance of improper data collection or a deceptive ad can count separately, so totals climb fast. The Epic Games COPPA penalty of $275 million is the largest ever for an FTC rule violation.11Federal Trade Commission. Fortnite Video Game Maker Epic Games to Pay More Than Half a Billion Dollars Over FTC Allegations Many cases resolve through consent agreements: the company changes its practices, agrees to compliance monitoring, and pays a penalty without formally admitting wrongdoing.
Alongside federal law, the advertising industry runs its own review body, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU), which publishes guidelines and refers uncooperative companies to the FTC or state attorneys general.13BBB National Programs. Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) CARU is also an approved COPPA safe harbor, so its standards carry regulatory weight for participants.14Federal Trade Commission. COPPA Safe Harbor Program
Reporting a Violation
To flag deceptive ads aimed at children or data collection without proper consent, file a report with the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.15Federal Trade Commission. ReportFraud.ftc.gov The FTC does not resolve individual complaints, but every report goes into the Consumer Sentinel database that law enforcement uses to spot patterns and build cases. Complaints about excessive commercial time or improper separation of ads and programming on television go directly to the FCC.