EP149: Protecting Kids from Harmful Online Ads

Interview with Michael Taverna / Founder of The Ad Village

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Children are the most valuable - and vulnerable - targets for online advertisers. Every day, brands and tech companies use sophisticated tools to track, profile, and influence kids, shaping their choices before they even know they’re being sold to. Michael Taverna is the founder and CEO of The Ad Village, a mission-driven platform that flips the script on digital advertising. After years managing multimillion-dollar campaigns for global brands, Michael saw firsthand how manipulative online ads could be. Now, he’s building a “digital Robin Hood” that reclaims ad space from corporations and replaces harmful ads with safe, uplifting messages for families.

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;18
Mike Taverna
You know, Steve Jobs said, if if you don't pay for the product, then you are the product. And so when people do give access to allow, say, their camera, to you know, be able to take pictures with it and then load that onto a social network. Your intention is, well, I'm going to take a photo of my vacation, and it's going to be easy for me to put this online.

00;00;18;24 - 00;00;34;02
Mike Taverna
But there's a lot of fine print in these, online, you know, contracts that, that people are signing essentially when they make their accounts. That allows for stuff like that to happen.

00;00;34;04 - 00;01;07;24
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the company of dads podcast. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. We're focused on lead dads, working moms, and how small changes at home or work can have a big impact on their lives. Each episode promises to deliver actionable advice on some area of concern at home or at work. Short. Direct. Again. Actionable. Five questions. Five answers. Today's episode is 100% going to focus on something that almost all of us parents, probably all of us parents, are concerned about, and that is internet safety and how our kids get marketed to online.

00;01;07;28 - 00;01;34;15
Paul Sullivan
Our guest is Michael Taverna, the founder and CEO of the AD Village, a mission driven platform that protects children from harmful online advertising by promoting positive, noncommercial messages. A seasoned digital marketer since 2009. Michael spent over a decade managing campaigns for some of the world's largest brands. Coming to us live from southern Maine. Welcome, Mike, to the company Dads podcast.

00;01;34;17 - 00;01;37;05
Mike Taverna
Hey, Paul, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

00;01;37;07 - 00;02;02;24
Paul Sullivan
This is going to be, fascinating. You and I have talked before, and I intently. You know, I didn't say I got this. I've got three kids. I see the stuff that that pops up. I see how easy they are to sort of lure into something. But that's just me. Anecdotally, you tell you as the expert, tell me, you know, tell us, why are children such a valuable target for online advertisers?

00;02;02;24 - 00;02;07;10
Paul Sullivan
I mean, why is it so appealing for for big brands to, to go at children online?

00;02;07;12 - 00;02;32;18
Mike Taverna
Yeah, there's many layers to it. But for you know what, one reason why it's very valuable is kids influence household buying decisions. Billions of dollars, you know, pass through households and purchases every year. And, you know, kids, kids can persuade parents into making decisions. And also kids at a young age, they're they're highly impressionable to, you know, and loyal to brands.

00;02;32;20 - 00;02;50;08
Mike Taverna
So that's the time when brands can really get in there, and turn these children, into lifelong customers. And so, you know, if the advertiser want to build the advertisers want to build this brand loyalty early, and reap the benefits of it long term.

00;02;50;10 - 00;02;53;08
Paul Sullivan
Have you ever heard of a company called Sephora?

00;02;53;10 - 00;02;54;29
Mike Taverna
Yeah, absolutely.

00;02;55;02 - 00;03;21;21
Paul Sullivan
They have got to be the most successful company in America today at marketing to young to girls and young women. I've got three daughters and that Sephora loyalty card. The points everything about it. And I don't want to I'm not not criticized for I, I'm not imply in the various intent, but they have a whole bunch of, you know, from the eight year old to the 16 year old, everything from hand sanitizer.

00;03;21;24 - 00;03;32;11
Paul Sullivan
That's way too expensive for the eight year old to some sort of skincare regime for the 16 year old. I mean, are they an example of a company that's been super successful marketing to to kids online?

00;03;32;13 - 00;03;59;16
Mike Taverna
I believe so. Funny you mentioned Sephora. My my niece. She's 11 now and recently had some pocket money to spend it and went to Sephora. And she actually went in there and said, wow, I didn't realize how expensive it was and didn't actually purchase anything there. But, you know, definitely was dragging her mom and her grandmother to bring her there last time she was near, you know, the main mall, which is the major mall near us here and, just outside of Portland, Maine.

00;03;59;18 - 00;04;21;17
Mike Taverna
So, yeah, it makes sense to me that, you know, they're pretty prominent. And that's exactly what they want to do. They want to get kids thinking about their brand, associate that with their status at school, and you got to be cool, you know, have lipstick or whatever. And it's got to be from Sephora itself or from that actual company.

00;04;21;19 - 00;04;29;25
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, call it a win, uncle Mike. I mean that she went into Sephora and didn't buy anything. So that that took some willpower.

00;04;29;28 - 00;04;44;24
Mike Taverna
Yeah. Pretty tough shopper there. So, but that's unusual. You know, I think she went in there. She had an idea. She thought, I'm going to be buying things. And then the reality hit where, oh, this, you know, stuff doesn't grow on trees. So I think it was a good, good lesson there.

00;04;45;00 - 00;05;05;16
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Question two. You know, most parents think of ads as just annoying or distracting. I certainly do, as as an adult. But one of your arguments is that they're actually harmful to children. So unpack that for me. You know, what kind of damage can advertising do to to children, especially ones who are just coming coming online?

00;05;05;19 - 00;05;27;15
Mike Taverna
Yeah, I think, you know, what, what ads can do is obviously promote unhealthy behaviors. I think everybody's mind immediately jumps to things like, junk food and, and candy and things like that that are just not good for your body. But there's a lot to advertising that's not good for your mind as well. And I think that both of those are really important.

00;05;27;18 - 00;06;00;12
Mike Taverna
So, you know, to build off of, like, a cosmetics example like Sephora, you know, that those ads from makeup companies and cosmetic companies can cause body image issues and, you know, lower self-esteem and things like that. And, you know, in the past year, there's been whistleblowers at major, you know, social media companies that have said that they haven't felt comfortable with the way that, their companies were positioning their products to cosmetic companies.

00;06;00;14 - 00;06;39;27
Mike Taverna
And one example of that's pretty jaw dropping is, where, social media network was telling their cosmetic advertisers that they have the ability, like, they know the age of their users. And they have the ability to decipher when, phones have taken selfies and then have deleted a lot of those selfies. And so when you match that type of ability to say, we've got access to your camera because you want to upload photos to, to our network and show your friends, but they also have the ability to know if the camera's facing towards you and you're taking photos.

00;06;39;27 - 00;06;43;12
Mike Taverna
Are you deleting those photos? Taking more of them?

00;06;43;14 - 00;06;54;17
Paul Sullivan
Unpack this a bit more. Yeah. Drill down. Like, why do they want to know this? What do they do with that information? Why do they care if you deleted a selfie? What information is that giving these companies?

00;06;54;19 - 00;07;18;12
Mike Taverna
That's something that they can use to say, okay, well, you know, majority of the time, if somebody is taking a selfie and deleting it, it's probably because they didn't like the way that they looked in it. And, and to use that coupled with, you know, an age in saying, okay, well, if they're, you know, between 13 to 16 years old and they're taking selfies and deleting them, we know that they're a female on our platform.

00;07;18;15 - 00;07;46;13
Mike Taverna
Hey, let's use that as a signal to have these cosmetic advertisers surveyed said to them about cosmetics. So the ad creative itself might not necessarily stand out as, oh, wow, there's going to be body image issues, and you need to buy this product to be pretty. Like they're not going to actually say that, but some advertisers are using and some networks are using these indicators to then say, oh, hey, you know, someone might be image conscious right now.

00;07;46;13 - 00;08;08;16
Mike Taverna
They're they're vulnerable. Here's a good opportunity to serve them in an ad about how makeup will make them prettier or, you know, things like that. And so these are seeds that can be planted that have long term, you know, mental health impacts. So it's it's there's definitely issues with junk food and stuff like that and planting those seeds.

00;08;08;23 - 00;08;15;10
Mike Taverna
And then also really, you know, these ones that can lead to long term, even lifelong, body image issues.

00;08;15;10 - 00;08;33;17
Paul Sullivan
And how is that legal? I mean, is there is there any regulation around that? How is that legal that you can you you're just granting access because when you get access to your, your camera or your photos to that, that app, they are then I mean, obviously it's not an individual doing it, but then some sort of, you know, algorithm or bot is going and doing it.

00;08;33;17 - 00;08;37;21
Paul Sullivan
And that is totally legal because you've given them access to your camera.

00;08;37;23 - 00;09;00;12
Mike Taverna
Yeah, there's a lot of permissions that people use. And so, you know, Steve Jobs said, if if you don't pay for the product, then you are the product. There's a huge industry about, you know, buying and selling data. And so when people do give access to allow, say, their camera, to, you know, be able to take pictures with it and then load that onto a social network.

00;09;00;15 - 00;09;20;03
Mike Taverna
Your intention is, well, I'm going to take a photo of my vacation, and it's going to be easy for me to put this online. But there's a lot of fine print in these, online, you know, contracts that, that people are signing essentially when they make their accounts. That allows for stuff like that to happen. Similar with you know, your phone's location data.

00;09;20;06 - 00;09;37;25
Mike Taverna
Hey, everybody has a weather app on their phone, and they like, when they go on vacation that it knows that you're now, you know, in a different part of the country. That's convenient. And that makes sense for that app. But little do they know that that location data can be used for many other things and than what they initially intended.

00;09;37;28 - 00;09;58;08
Mike Taverna
So there's a lot of companies that are, you know, doing this legally. Air quotes. Not to say that it's ethical. And in that example about, you know, social media networks, you know, using these indicators to get cosmetic ads targeting children. You know, sometimes the advertisers don't even know that that's going on behind the scenes.

00;09;58;15 - 00;10;34;25
Mike Taverna
All they care about is, hey, I serve this ad. People engage with it, I sell my product, I make money. And they don't realize, you know, that. Oh, these selfies were necessarily deleted. It's not necessarily a checkbox that they're getting. It's, it's a performance based world, and they need to make money back. And, you know, they're they're just really looking at the numbers there and the social networks, they know that, hey, well, if I have all these ingredients over here and I can and I can put them together in a way that just turns numbers on to a screen for my advertiser to be, looking profitable, then that advertiser is going to

00;10;34;25 - 00;10;44;17
Mike Taverna
put more money towards my network. They're going to maybe reallocate from other networks and, and that's really where, you know, a lot of the problems occur.

00;10;44;19 - 00;11;01;22
Paul Sullivan
This is chilling, Mike. You know, question three, you know, was going to kind of ask about this, but I instead, I want to turn the question around a little bit and delve deeper and question who's going to be, you know, how to advertisers track and target people online. You've just given us some examples there. And, you know, the visible tools and strategies that power this surveillance.

00;11;01;22 - 00;11;21;14
Paul Sullivan
But you could drill down a bit more on that. But really the question is what do we do? Like, you know, you can make this an ad for AD Village. But what about like what do we as individuals do because there is a trade off. Like, I want to know, if I drive an hour away, I want to know what the weather is going to be when I get there the following morning.

00;11;21;16 - 00;11;36;14
Paul Sullivan
But that seems to have a potential downside. So knowing that advertisers are tracking and targeting people online, knowing that there are, you know, these these invisible tools of surveillance. What do we as as parents and as adults, do about it?

00;11;36;17 - 00;11;43;29
Mike Taverna
Yeah, great. Great question. I think, you know, being more aware of terms and conditions, you know, it's it's easy.

00;11;43;29 - 00;11;47;22
Paul Sullivan
Not the fine print. Don't need to read the fine print, Mike.

00;11;47;25 - 00;12;12;07
Mike Taverna
We don't have time to read all of the fine print, but, you know, there's there's definitely landmines in there. Right? And that's to cover their bases and say, well, legally, you know, we've we've received consent to do these things that might otherwise be protected under, advertising laws. You know, so I think being a conscious consumer is, is pretty important.

00;12;12;09 - 00;12;44;08
Mike Taverna
And that doesn't come easy, right? Those terms and conditions pop up. You're like, I'm just trying to build my account right now. It forces you to just scroll to the bottom and so they can just say yes, legally, that when across their screen, you check the box and you move on. But there are a lot of things that are baked into hardware and software now, you know, such as on your smartphone where some companies are trying to, to do good and, you know, notice when, I have, an Android device.

00;12;44;08 - 00;13;01;26
Mike Taverna
So every now and again and I get an alert on my phone that says, hey, you haven't used these apps for a while, so we're going to just basically turn off all the permissions on them that you've agreed to. And so sometimes those things are opt in as well, where, hey, will you allow your phone to adjust permissions on your devices?

00;13;01;29 - 00;13;24;22
Mike Taverna
And so as long as it's going in one direction and you're allowing your phone or, you know, more importantly, your children's phones and tablets and laptops, if you're allowing them to downgrade access and to restrict things, you know, that's a nice way to not have to read through all the fine print, but also know that you're set up with this evolving way to maintain these permissions.

00;13;24;27 - 00;13;52;15
Mike Taverna
A new app gets downloaded. You know, hopefully they're not doing anything nefarious. But then, hey, if that app is no longer engaged, it's going to stop, you know, recording that data. So, you know, there's also just, you know, doing things that, you know, like clearing your cache every now and again and trying to reset your history that they've built up on your devices and make it a little bit harder for them to track you.

00;13;52;17 - 00;13;55;21
Mike Taverna
All of those things can, can really add up.

00;13;55;23 - 00;14;22;14
Paul Sullivan
My youngest daughter obviously doesn't we are not I was it my so we don't allow her very much time online. And what she does have are like some games that she's downloaded where she can color online or like, dress up a Barbie doll or something like that online. Are those things that we should be worried about as well, because there's tracking built into something so seemingly, innocent as a coloring app?

00;14;22;16 - 00;14;52;27
Mike Taverna
Yeah. I think, you know, there's there's definitely, you know, games and places for children to play that are relatively safe. Not every not every tool that's out there is, you know, going against the rules or doing anything. You know, that would be alarming there. But it's always worth checking out and making sure. So, there are platforms that that they monetize their business in ways that don't require ads.

00;14;52;29 - 00;15;19;17
Mike Taverna
So I think that that's something that's really important for parents as as somebody who's in the industry of advertising that wants to use the tools of the trade that I've learned, you know, for help in helping major brands serve ads in the past. I think it's really important to, you know, be aware of not every monetization has to happen through advertising, and maybe through subscription services and things like that.

00;15;19;19 - 00;15;41;07
Mike Taverna
That's that's how tools like that can, can make money without needing to, you know, manipulate children for the sake of advertising, for the sake of profit. I also encourage, you know, to get back to your other question. What else can you do? You know, ad blockers are a great way to try to defend, your child's devices.

00;15;41;07 - 00;16;02;01
Mike Taverna
So if they do stumble into territories online that do serve ads, maybe they're not even specifically designed for children. So that's where some of these slippery slopes can occur, and ads can start to make their way in front of children. Ad blockers are a great way to, limit the amount of opportunities an advertiser has to get in front of somebody as well.

00;16;02;04 - 00;16;27;02
Mike Taverna
So I'd say be vigilant, you know, and, and, there's a lot of good, resources out there that, you know, provide labels that, you know, they've re vet these environments that are designed for children. And so, you know, if you see that there is like a safety seal, hey, this is Coppa certified, which is cop a, that stands for Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

00;16;27;04 - 00;16;49;08
Mike Taverna
That's kind of one vote towards saying, okay, you know, a third parties. Look at this. Now there's a lot of companies that go out there and do those types of certifications. So you might want to look in and just see is that a real certification there. It's not just something somebody threw on the website. But there are some visual indicators that can make you feel a little bit more trustworthy of those environments when, when kids are playing on them.

00;16;49;11 - 00;17;11;04
Paul Sullivan
Okay. Oh, wow. Terrifying and amazing. But let me ask you this. You know, we're talking about two here now. I think every parent, tuned into these things when they become apparent and they're not really paying attention otherwise. Because why would they? Our lives are busy. But have things changed in the past, like 5 to 10 years, to make this problem worse for children?

00;17;11;04 - 00;17;18;20
Paul Sullivan
Or are people just becoming, you know, more aware of it now? And it's been an and an ongoing issue?

00;17;18;22 - 00;17;42;05
Mike Taverna
I think it's both. I mean, people are definitely more aware of it now. You know, as, as, you know, a relatively young industry, online advertising, it's it's still, you know, a lot of moving targets. But I think people are getting to be more aware that, you know, that that there's it's not all sunshine and rainbows when you're talking about going online.

00;17;42;08 - 00;17;59;27
Mike Taverna
Other things that have changed other than just awareness is, you know, children are getting in front of screens more often. There's some studies out right now that say, you know, an extremely high percentage of two year olds have their own tablets now. Some of these studies say like 50% of two year olds have their own tablet.

00;17;59;27 - 00;18;18;28
Mike Taverna
And then when I talk to parents, that doesn't seem to necessarily be the case, but I think the point is made that, yeah, you know, kids are getting in front of screens more often. Which has never happened at such a young age before. So not only are kids getting access to screens at a younger age.

00;18;19;00 - 00;18;39;00
Mike Taverna
You know, just the amount of screen time that they're getting per day is growing. So, you know, some parents that are busy might put their kid in front of a screen as, like, a temporary babysitter. You know, we all got to do what we got to do sometimes, and, you know, that might not be the best choice, but that might be the only choice at the time.

00;18;39;03 - 00;18;59;00
Mike Taverna
But, you know, longer screen time is more than just bad for their eyes and for their attention spans. It's more exposure to these opportunities to have these ads just pop up in front of your child's face or sitting next to you. And before you know it, you know, an advertiser has made an impression, and now they're moving on.

00;18;59;00 - 00;19;24;09
Mike Taverna
And then another ads coming up. And this is all happening within the household, which is which is pretty scary. And then, you know, last on on that point, is just the technology from the advertising side is getting more advanced. So there's tools that help optimize and, you know, look for, oh, when I serve this type of ad on this gaming platform, it turns into a lot of money for me.

00;19;24;11 - 00;19;48;05
Mike Taverna
That used to be humans like myself. I worked in, like, the automotive industry for a very long time, helping sell, you know, cars for major brands. It used to be a human that would sit there and look at data and go, okay, you know, if I, you know, on Google search, if I, if I bid on this keyword like a new Subaru and Portland, Maine, that turns into a lot of revenue for me and a lot of website traffic.

00;19;48;07 - 00;20;13;23
Mike Taverna
And, you know, humans, we can make those decisions at a slow pace. And we're not always accurate. But now with technology and especially with AI getting involved in these algorithms getting in place, the machines are finding these needles in a haystack that a human might not otherwise be able to. And then they change settings on advertising campaigns, and then you go, okay, we'll spend more money here and bid more aggressively.

00;20;13;25 - 00;20;37;22
Mike Taverna
And, you know, really do anything you can within the means of our budget to get this ad into this slot. So they're not necessarily even looking for, you know, is this, unattended young child in front of a screen? And parents aren't paying attention right now? It's, really just about do the numbers make sense? And they add more fuel to the fire when they see success?

00;20;37;24 - 00;20;52;11
Paul Sullivan
I mean, is it fair to say there isn't, sort of nefarious intent, but there are nefarious results because a machine is doing all this and just trying to sell as much as it possibly can without really caring who it's selling to.

00;20;52;13 - 00;21;21;03
Mike Taverna
Yeah, I think that's great. I should I gotta write that one down. Yeah. It's it's it's like going back to that cosmetic example. You know, the cosmetic companies didn't actually know that these social platforms were using, you know, the cell phone photo, the selfie indicators to, have the cosmetic companies serve those ads. They're putting in a budget, they're putting in creative that, you know, they, they put in some, some information like that, and then the machines start to take over.

00;21;21;05 - 00;21;42;04
Mike Taverna
And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of advertisers out there that are not necessarily, you know, typing in that they want to do these things, but, you know, to get the results that they want and that their company demands and their clients, you know, advertising agency clients demand, these are the types of things that can be happening behind the scenes.

00;21;42;07 - 00;22;05;05
Paul Sullivan
Wow. Question five. This will come as, no surprise to you or anyone listening. And that is, what in the world do we do, about this? You said, you know, the regulation seems to be light, but, you know, how does a platform like yours, the ad village, how does the platform, you know, help parent? How do you flip the script on these advertisers and, you know, protect kids, as it were?

00;22;05;07 - 00;22;31;07
Mike Taverna
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for asking. You know, the the ad village. What we're doing is we're using the tools of the trade. Except where where are the good guys? So, we're fighting fire with fire in some capacity. But it's all opt in, so parents are intentionally joining our online community. The bigger our community gets, the more, you know, power that we have to disrupt what our online ad auctions.

00;22;31;10 - 00;22;51;06
Mike Taverna
And so an online at auction happens, you know, as, as your, you know, the video that you're watching is taking a pause and that the ads about to load, there's a split second auction that happens for all the advertisers. Just say, you know, this is this is how much I'm willing to spend, serve this ad right now.

00;22;51;08 - 00;23;10;21
Mike Taverna
And so advertisers to go back to a cosmetic example, you know, they're selling this product, they know how much it costs them. They can only spend so much money to get the product out there, because they know how often it's going to actually get purchased. And they're really focused on return on ad spend and the return on investment.

00;23;10;24 - 00;23;29;24
Mike Taverna
So with the ad village, we're going into those same auctions and we don't really care about selling a product. Our ads don't don't try to sell anything, to children. We're just trying to get messages out there that say, hey, you're awesome. Have a great day. You're loved. Things like that. To to make the internet a better place for kids.

00;23;29;27 - 00;23;51;00
Mike Taverna
And by doing that, we're taking up the space that an advertiser would be. They're trying to to sell a product to a child and influence them. And so but what we're doing is we're going to those auctions, say it's a car auction, you know, the, the, the everybody at that auction in their mind says, oh, that used vehicles worth $5,000.

00;23;51;00 - 00;24;16;12
Mike Taverna
So I'm going to try to get it for, you know, less than a thousand. When you go to that car auction and we say, hey, that car is part of our community, that that child's part of our community, we're willing to spend, you know, as much as possible, to try to get our ad in front of them and scare away these other advertisers, the other advertisers they're looking for, you know, the lamb that has been separated from the herd.

00;24;16;14 - 00;24;42;20
Mike Taverna
They they want to go after people that are inexpensive to serve ads to that are not protected. And we're a bubble that we're we're trying to form, where, again, where we're spending more money than what they think is worth it to get ads in front of the kids. And, and unfortunately, there's a lot of the lambs out there that have been separated from the herd that the advertisers can go after that are much less expensive.

00;24;42;20 - 00;24;59;22
Mike Taverna
So they've got tons of options out there. And when they again try to get an ad in front of a child within our community, you know, we're this protective bubble, a digital moat, or, you know, a drawbridge or something like that that's really trying to interfere with that whole ecosystem.

00;24;59;24 - 00;25;22;21
Paul Sullivan
You know, this has been amazing, Mike. You're I mean, you're like the spy who came in from the cold here. I mean, you do an amazing work. But, you know, one question I, I've been remiss and asking, you know, sort of bonus question here is why are you doing this? Like what what what motivated you to to do this, to not be that, you know, Cold War spy doing all this, but to actually go, you know, flip the script and come to the other team.

00;25;22;23 - 00;25;54;20
Mike Taverna
Yeah. You know, I, I think when I was in college, I, somebody came in and did a presentation. They ran an analytics company, in Burlington, Vermont, where I went to school. And I thought that was fascinating. At the time, it was probably 2006. The industry was really young at the time. And, and I just thought it was fascinating that you could serve ads to somebody online and like, basic stuff like, see if they clicked on it and like, oh, click through rate and oh, God, they bought something.

00;25;54;22 - 00;26;14;04
Mike Taverna
And so that always fascinated me. And that's how, you know, I got into that as a career. In my career, I worked in the automotive space for most of it, and I didn't really care too much about vehicles. I thought the technology was cool. The company and the people I worked with was was really cool.

00;26;14;06 - 00;26;43;08
Mike Taverna
And so I like that aspect of it, but it was missing that, like at the end of the day, you know, did I fully care about what I was doing? And other than helping out my colleagues and, you know, some of the, the great clients we had and stuff, it wasn't that filling. But when I was in high school and, and in college, I was a lifeguard that that, taught sailing lessons and to kids that were 10 to 13 years old.

00;26;43;10 - 00;27;08;04
Mike Taverna
And, that was really fulfilling. I thought it was cool, you know, teaching kids something that they, they wouldn't have otherwise known. And so after being in the industry for, you know, 16 years, I was at a family event, my niece and nephew are, you know, their parents are very responsible. One's a teacher. The other one works in the in the school.

00;27;08;06 - 00;27;28;16
Mike Taverna
And local school here. And, you know, they're great parents. But at this party, I was noticing as the parents would come by, and and check in on the kids and say, hey, you know, get off your phones and go talk to grandpa or something like that. Oh. What video are you watching? There would be a video on the screen, but then a couple minutes later, an ad would pop up and it would disappear.

00;27;28;16 - 00;27;47;18
Mike Taverna
And like, the parents would not have seen that unless they were just hovering over their shoulders. So it really got me thinking about how, you know, how could I use the skills that I have. The tools of the trade match that up with my passion, working with kids and improving the lives of children? And it really clicked when I was like, oh, wow.

00;27;47;20 - 00;28;07;02
Mike Taverna
Like, what ad was that? Because, you know, sometimes these ads aren't just targeted to children. You know, they're, they're ads that might actually have tried to get in front of the adult, in the house. And all of a sudden, you know, the kids are seeing these other ads, too. So, yeah, that's where I had the moment.

00;28;07;04 - 00;28;38;15
Mike Taverna
And then, you know, from there I was trying to figure out, okay, well, like, how how do I actually do something about that? Because there's, there's tools out there that, you know, allow parents to monitor devices. There's other, other solutions out there, but, it really felt like, and, and after doing research, I couldn't find anybody in the space that was actively going into auctions, you know, having an advertising budget that came from, you know, the parents that have enrolled their kids into into our community.

00;28;38;21 - 00;28;56;20
Mike Taverna
And then using those crowdsource funds to just scare away the advertisers. And and again, you know, just try to make it more expensive, scare them away because they're they're focused on the bottom line and not necessarily, you know, making the internet a more positive place.

00;28;56;22 - 00;29;12;26
Paul Sullivan
Thank you. Michael Taverna, CEO of the AD Village, the spy who came in from the cold to help and parent out. I thoroughly enjoyed this and talk about some news you can use. Thank you so much for what you're doing, and thank you so much for your time today.

00;29;12;29 - 00;29;16;01
Mike Taverna
Thanks for having me, Paul. This is great.

00;29;16;03 - 00;29;33;27
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company of Dads podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in week after week, trying to use this moment here to thank the people who make it possible. Number one, of course, Helder Moura, who is our podcast editor. We also have Skip Terry, home to many of you know from Lead Diaries.

00;29;33;27 - 00;29;57;01
Paul Sullivan
He's taken over our social media. Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Servant is there, each and every day helping with the web development akin to any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listens.

00;29;57;01 - 00;30;00;14
Paul Sullivan
And, hopefully you'll tune in again next week. Thanks so much.