Inside the fight to make the internet safe for Vietnamese kids

The level of exposure to online content including advertising for children in Vietnam is increasing, with nearly 80% of this audience choosing to view the internet over television and 98% accessing information from online sources in 2020. The Drum finds out what is being done to make the internet safe for Vietnamese kids.Despite online usage by Vietnamese kids being one of the highest in the region, with 88% accessing the internet via a smartphone, awareness of children’s data privacy laws is one of the lowest.However, it is gaining momentum given the recent kid-safe regulation passed by the country’s prime minister’s office in June 2021. Although not as robust as GDPR-K and COPPA compliance, it is a progressive stance by the Vietnamese government recognizing that a Vietnamese child’s average daily time spent online has increased some 15% this year to date.On average, Vietnamese children spent 2h 26mins online on weekdays and 3h on weekends in 2021.Michael Hung, the chief operating officer of TenMax AdTech Lab, explains with the explosion of social media platforms in Vietnam – the top three are YouTube, Facebook and TikTok – there are limited if any data privacy and safety regulations that can be enforced by a court of law. “To this end, 98% of Vietnamese parents surveyed in our yearly Kids Digital Insights Research are worried about their kids’ safety on social media,” he explains.“79% cite inappropriate content as their biggest worry (highest in the region, with the Philippines at 47% next) and 62% note the platforms’ bad moral influence on their child.”To address increasing concerns about the privacy and safety of children and young families using the internet TenMax AdTech Lab recently formed a partnership with the digital media platform TotallyAwesome.Both parties aim to design to provide a digital environment with child-friendly advertising content in Vietnam, while complying with the world’s highest standards of privacy and safety for this young audience.Will Anstee, the chief executive officer of TotallyAwesome, notes that as adtech and big tech delay their evolution to a cookie-less world to 2023, the answer for brands engaging a young audience online is contextual targeting.“With technological advances, such as semantic targeting, which lets a brand’s values resonate in the most appropriate emotional context, driving hyper-relevancy and meaning, TotallyAwesome also relies on an army of people, albeit time intensive, to apply a ‘human value judgement’ to content, ensuring a brand is both laser-focused and never compromised,” he explains.“Therefore our philosophy and investment in contextual targeting merges best practices of both machines and people, providing brands a unique, safe and scalable channel to their high-value audiences, driving superior media ROI. It’s a win-win.“We have GDPR-K and COPPA compliance embedded at the heart of our bespoke processes for a brand’s peace of mind. We understand the power is not with the publisher, rather the power is at the page level within the publisher, giving media campaigns booked by TotallyAwesome’s media benchmarks some 10 times above industry. How? By empowering brands to be highly relevant, with dignity, utility and permission.”With 55.5% of Vietnam’s population under 35 years old, TotallyAwesome plans to reach them in the future through a three-step process to guarantee a brand’s media effectiveness and efficiency in engaging kids and teens in Vietnam.The three-step process includes audience-first, curation and enrichment.“Audience First is a bespoke inventory ‘discovery’ process capturing a high-quality audience marketplace where brands can engage an audience with confidence and accuracy via leveraging through analytics of behavioral patterns and paths to purchase across content, interests and mindsets,” explains Anstee.“They can also use real-time consumer insights on media habits and content consumption. There will be a resident pediatric psychologist providing behavioral insights at each life stage, by market and AI-driven algorithms matching similar content.”For curation, TotallyAwesome wants to ensure a brand is shown in KidSafe-certified content that is safe for their audience and their brand.This is done by moderation by a specialist team in Vietnam of kids, teens and family experts who have over two million hours of combined expertise in working with brands and content owners.Antsee adds: “For enrichment, we ensure consistent categorization by humans who understand content, language, age, gender and life stage, not algorithms. Therefore, content is categorized by psychologists and family/educational experts so that safety is guaranteed by humans, not an ever-changing algorithm.”

Inside the fight to make the internet safe for Vietnamese kids

By Shawn Lim | Reporter, Asia Pacific

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