Ya, but Neopets also caters to the same audience and has a ton of advertisements - what’s the different between the two sites?

Of course Ganz has the right to advertise, if they chose to do so. What bothered most of the parents that wrote in to my site was that they changed their business model very suddenly. They had proclaimed themselves to be a place that was ad-free, as a very safe place for parents to allow their children to play. You can only gain access to the site by paying a hefty $15 for the stuffed toy - you can’t tell me they don’t make a decent profit on that! The audience for Webkinz is 5-12 year olds. Particularly at the younger ages, parents are justified in their concerns. Suddenly ads started showing up. These ads were not the kind that a pop up blocker could remove - they were actually part of the site, so you couldn’t avoid them. What had parents worried was that they would lead kids to click off the site and go where they shouldn’t. Ganz replied to my email asking them to explain, and they said that they were going to be very judicious in the ads they allowed, and they would not allow click through ads. Some parents were reassured ny this, others were not…. the marketing aspects of this are interesting - why change their model? where are they going with this? Are they positioning themselves to be sold? If so, would less scrupulous ads follow? How do we protect our kids in this day and age? That is what the buzz is about.