Gofish creates ad network to rep kids' sites

Video site GoFish is trying to capitalize on its cognition of the youth ad with the launch of an online ad web aimed at kid and teens, and thereby compete with kid web giants Walt Disney and jukebox.

The GoFish ad web will mark those aged six to 17 on sites including Miniclip.com, girl's site CartoonDollEmporium.com, and cooky Jar Entertainment's official sites for "Caillou", "Spider Riders" and "rebel Test," among others. The web will offer bundle to individually target kids, teens and tweens, said Tabreez Verjee, president of GoFish.

GoFish must abide by child selling laws, including the Children's Online privateness Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) government the aggregation and use of kids personal data. The company said it will work with publishers in its web to create a consistent approach to ad to kid.

"We can help publishers out there that want to join our web and educate them as to what the rules are and how to be compliant," said Verjee. "The first benefit that we can provide from a kids ad perspective is make sure that they are not visual perception anything that is inappropriate."

COPPA and similar regulations have sometimes scared advertisers away from lesser known children's sites and led them to the giants of the children's publishing, Walt Disney and jukebox, said Ian Schafer, CEO and laminitis of selling agency Deep Focus, and a ClickZ columnist. Schafer said as long as GoFish ensures regulatory compliance, the company can aim for the marketplace segment now owned by Walt Disney and jukebox.

"If you look at the list of top 10 or 20 sites for kids under 15 you're going to get names of sites you've never heard of, and a lot of those sites are repped by GoFish," said Schafer. "This has the promise of being a more cost efficient alternative to reach a demographic that is historically only been reachable en masse on a handful of properties."

One challenge for GoFish will be to monitor its ad network publishing partners closely to assure compliance on the part of all partners, according to Schafer.

"If one site falters it's not just a problem for the site; it's a problem for the network. In this case the network is really only as strong as its weakest link," he said.