CARU Announces Changes To Guidelines For 2022

In February, we posted that the Children's Advertising Review Unit (or "CARU") was in the process of updating its Guidelines for ads directed to children. The Guidelines had last been updated in 2006, and advertisers often struggled to figure out how to apply them in an advertising landscape that had dramatically changed since then.

The new Guidelines, announced last week, should help. Although the core principles underlying the Guidelines are the same, there are some important updates. Here are some of the key changes:

• The new Guidelines apply to children under 13 years old across all platforms. (Previously, the Guidelines applied primarily to children under 12.)
• Whereas the previous Guidelines focused television, the new version better reflects today's digital advertising landscape.