Kids Videos and Ads

You have turned on your favorite YouTube channel for your child and they are enjoying their favorite show. Suddenly, you hear them screaming for their show and when you look at what’s on, it’s an ad for some type of workout product, or whatever else that you enjoy watching on YouTube. Your child’s video has been interrupted by what you might consider an inappropriate ad. It’s frustrating for you and your child.

However, as frustrating as these ads may be in videos, they are also something that you can’t really do much about. If you want to use YouTube, or other free video services, then you should expect to be interrupted by ads on some regular basis. Ads are how these companies make money, and it’s how the content creators make their money. Expecting completely free content and videos is unrealistic. If you’re looking for free videos, then you’re going to really need to make them yourselves.

Realistically, ads on videos are the exact same thing in a different form as what you use to see on television. Ten years ago, kids would be sitting and watching TV in the mornings on the weekend and there would be commercials every 7 minutes or so. An ad in a video is just another way to market something to your or your child. These days, we’re so used to getting what we want on demand that sometimes we forget how common this has always been in our lives - marketing and advertising to kids has always been something that has been done since the television became ubiquitous in every household.

If ads bother you, and you don’t want your children to have to sit through them then you have a couple of options. You can choose to simply not consume any forms of media, as all of them are going to contain some kind of advertising. The other option is to pay for one or more of the services that are out there that have content. A pay service makes its money through the subscription that you pay each month so that you don’t have to see ads with every video (there are still some content providers that include ads even on a subscription).

One of the benefits of a subscription service is that the content is generally a little higher quality, and you can have a bit more assurance that your kids aren’t watching a video that is really just an advertisement for some type of toy or other good. So many of the videos that are out there on YouTube and similar sites are kids that are showing off toys or other things that your kids will like - the people making these videos are getting paid by these brands to push these products and to make them look like toys you really should have.

Paid video services will generally have a higher level of quality, and in a lot of cases you’ll have more control over what your kids are watching. Many of these services have parental controls that let you set what videos can be watched and for how long. You’ll be able to feel a bit better about what your kids are actually watching when turning the TV or their device on.

There are also a lot of choices for subscription based video services. If your kids aren’t finding anything they like on one of these services, you can easily move to another service and cancel the previous one. While it can be frustrating to have to switch between services, the fact that it’s as simple as paying for a different service and cancelling the previous is awesome.

If you’re tired of ads in your kids videos, it’s time to move to a subscription service. They skip the ads and will provide a higher overall quality of show usually for your kids to enjoy.