The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) was founded in 1974 to promote responsible
children's advertising as part of a strategic alliance with the major advertising
trade associations through the National Advertising Review Council (comprising the
AAAA, the AAF, the ANA and the CBBB). CARU is the children's arm of the advertising
industry's self-regulation program and evaluates child-directed advertising and
promotional material in all media to advance truthfulness, accuracy and consistency
with its Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising and relevant
laws.
CARU's basic activities are the review and evaluation of child-directed advertising
in all media, and online privacy practices as they affect children. When these are
found to be misleading, inaccurate, or inconsistent with CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines
for Children's Advertising, CARU seeks change through the voluntary cooperation
of advertisers.
As an extension of its initial mission, to help advertisers deal sensitively with
the child audience in a responsible manner, in 1996 CARU added a section to its
Guidelines that highlight issues, including children's privacy, that are
unique to the Internet and online sites directed at children age 12 and under. These
Guidelines served as the basis of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1998 (COPPA). CARU has established a Safe Harbor
Program for our supporters to help
them protect the privacy of children online, and meet the requirements of COPPA
and our Guidelines.
CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines are deliberately subjective, going beyond
the issues of truthfulness and accuracy to take into account the uniquely impressionable
and vulnerable child audience.
CARU recognizes that the special nature and needs of a youthful audience require
particular care and diligence on the part of advertisers. Consequently, CARU performs
a high level of monitoring, including the scrutinizing of over ten thousand television
commercials, and the review of advertisements in print, radio and online media.
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