In 2017, PwC released its Kids Digital Media Report, which estimated that the value of the global kids digital advertising market would hit $1.2 billon (€1bn) by 2021. Now yhey have released an updated report for 2019 which puts that figure much higher.

Over 170,000 children go online for the first time every day, driving considerable disruption across the media landscape. As children become a larger percentage of the daily internet audience, laws to protect them are expected to be passed with greater urgency. These increasing regulatory requirements support a shift in spend towards dedicated kidtech players, who provide privacy-centric solutions to the industry.

Key points from PwC’s 2019 report include:

• It’s estimated that the global kids digital advertising market will continue to grow in excess of 20 per cent p.a. (2018-21), reaching c.$1.7 billion by 2021 (equating to 37 per cent of total kids advertising spend)

• Over 40 per cent of total new internet users globally in 2018 were children.

• With suggestions that US privacy law for children may be extended to 16 year olds (up from 13 today) and that other countries, such as China and India, are planning to implement similar laws; by 2021 approximately 800 million kids could have digital privacy protections (vs. approximately 130 million today)

• The rollout of GDPR in Europe (with its GDPR-K kids component) has accelerated the understanding of compliance globally beyond major brands and is supporting growth in the emerging kidtech sector

• The biggest winners of kids digital ad spend expansion will be kidtech-enabled content (compliant with kids digital privacy laws), YouTube and VoD/OTT

• Despite the growth of kids digital ad spending, a significant amount of content investment is going into subscription services, which is not reachable by brands

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