San Diego County sues AppLovin over alleged child ad targeting

• The county alleges children were shown ads for adult services, alcohol, vaping and sexual content.
• AppLovin’s policies prohibit knowingly collecting children’s data or serving ads to children.
• The lawsuit follows AppLovin’s legal action against Unity over its Ad Quality SDK.

San Diego County has sued AppLovin as it allegedly bypassed parental controls to serve children ads for adult dating services, alcohol, vaping and graphic sexual content.

As reported by Bloomberg, the lawsuit claims AppLovin collected sensitive data from children’s devices even when parental controls and ad-tracking opt-outs were enabled. 

This allegedly included information that could identify where children live, study, and sleep. The county also alleges AppLovin used fingerprinting to track children for advertising purposes without parental consent.

Child safety claims

The complaint includes screenshots of ads allegedly shown on devices configured for six-year-olds with Google parental controls enabled. One showed an ad for a sexualised AI chatbot in a physics-based puzzle game, while another showed ads for cannabis gummies.

San Diego County’s newly formed Consumer Fairness and Public Protection Unit filed three lawsuits on Monday, including separate action against Roblox over child safety.

AppLovin’s policies state that it does not knowingly collect personal information from children or serve advertisements to children. 

The complaint also says the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated AppLovin’s advertising practices last year. AppLovin CFO Matt Stumpf said in August that the investigation had closed without enforcement action.

The lawsuit comes days after AppLovin took legal action against Unity over data collected through Unity’s Ad Quality SDK. AppLovin is seeking restrictions on Unity’s collection and use of advertising data.