How The Dpdp Act Impacts Personalised Online Experiences For Kids

Personalising content and services for children based on contexts, such as a particular geographical location or age group is beneficial and should be encouraged, Kriti Trehan, founder of Data &Co– Law and Policy Advisors explained during The Quantum Hub’s discussion on Balancing Privacy and Agency under the Data Protection Act. Speaking to MediaNama on the sidelines of the event, Trehan added that personalisation of services for kids allows platforms to curate age-appropriate experiences for them. “And personalisation necessarily requires a certain amount of tracking,” she said.

Trehan made these comments in the context of the provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act, 2023). Under the DPDP Act and the recently released draft data protection rules, companies cannot carry out direct targeted advertising to children. They can also not carry out tracking/behavioral monitoring of children.

All companies are restricted from these activities besides a list of specific service providers (like child care providers, healthcare providers, etc) and specific services (like verifying the age of a user or preventing a child’s access to detrimental content). 

“Typically when we talk of restrictions on advertising for kids, we focus on behavioural ads – i.e. ads that target an individual child based on their individual preferences/ profiles. Contextual ads on the other hand are targeted at certain demographics or groups, not individuals, and so are typically not blanket-restricted for kids,” Trehan said, explaining her position on contextual advertising. She added that in the absence of any kind of tracking, children could potentially lose out on innovations catered to create age-appropriate online experiences, or worse, kids being exposed to the entirety of the internet (including the inappropriate). 

What is contextual tracking?

Contextual tracking, at least in the context of advertising is a method where advertisers match ad content with the content of a particular platform. Think of it as having ads for Horlicks instead of life insurance policies on Cartoon Network simply because the Horlicks ad fits the audience base better. In that way, contextual advertising could fall within the scope of targeted advertising under the act. 

Why it matters:

The DPDP Act does not define what it means by either targeted advertising or tracking. As such, it is unclear whether companies can use contextual tracking when personalising ads or content for children under the rules. This points to yet another challenge that companies might face when implementing this act since, to a certain extent, all forms of advertising are personalised to users.

The ambiguities around contextual advertising:

Given that the act and the rules do not have any clear mention of personalisation, Varun Mehta, Principal Associate at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, suggested that one interpretation of the rules could be that companies may have to completely do away with personalised content/ personalised ads for children based on static factors like a specific location.

“That depends though on the interpretation you’re making because these terms are not defined and the understanding of what amount of personalization is targeted is just a business understanding. I think at this point,” Mehta said. He added that companies could also benefit from knowing the legislative intent behind restrictions on targeted advertising.

 “Is targeted advertising purely based on static criteria, is that also harmful? Or are we just trying to curb personalised ads that could be used to manipulate children to get them to buy certain kinds of products?” he pondered. When asked whether the rules could shed clarity on this, especially given the fact that the act does not define the terms, Mehta said that “generally speaking terms are defined and understood in the act and not best left to realignment under the rules.” He added that FAQs or clarity by the Government would help make things clearer. 

Also read:

• Why whitelisting platforms for behavioral monitoring under DPDP Rules is ineffective #Nama
• EU Data Protection Board Suggests Tokenised Age Verification: Know All About It
• How the Draft Data Protection Rules 2025 Will Change Children’s Data Processing in India

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