Kids and teens are the latest money spinner for Internet marketing types as the battle for young eyeballs and pocket money got under way at the Digital Kids conference in San Francisco last week.

The US craze for everything Internet took on a new and menacing glow at the event as companies discussed how to market (carefully) to children. On a positive note, most of these kiddy-portals are mindful of the new dangers on the Internet but disagreed on the how best to protect children from online predators and prevent access to harmful material on the Net.

In the last year, an army of companies has arrived to cater to this new market and start-ups such as icanbuy.com, KiddoNet, and JuniorNet are positioning themselves to take on the entertainment and edu-tainment titans such as Disney, Nickelodeon and the Children's Television Workshop.

Indeed, kids and teens are the two largest growth sectors on the Internet and are spending more time and money online. By 2002 more than 38.5 million kids will be online spending in excess of $1.3 billion (€1.24 billion) per year, according to a new survey by Internet market research firm NFO Interactive. Today, 67 per cent of teens and 37 per cent of kids who use the Internet have either appraised or bought products online.

"The question is how do we protect these children from unscrupulous marketers without destroying the Internet," said Mr Gary Knell, vice-president of the Children's Television Workshop, a non-profit company that is responsible for the children's television program Sesame Street. "Our view is that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water, we should attack the problems and not the medium."

These problems are: the Internet enables sophisticated marketers monitor which colours, shapes and products children best respond to; this data can be collected, stored and used to target children; children can buy the product with the click of a mouse (if they have the credit).

"The solution is to urge companies to exercise responsible selling techniques," said Anya Sacharow. Ms Sacharow is an analyst with the Internet consultancy, Jupiter Communications, which organised the Digital Kids. "We recommend that companies create a transactional experience that helps kids grow as they learn about fiscal responsibility, the value of money, and evaluation of products." However, some kiddy-portals such as JuniorNet (for 3- to 11-year olds) regard any attempt to market to children as irresponsible. Instead, it relies on a monthly subscription fee of $9.95 for its income.

Others such as icanbuy.com, a portal designed to help kids spend their pocket money online, advocate teaching children fiscal responsibility. The site enables parents to set up a weekly or monthly allowance so that kids can buy books, music, or toys online. How does it earn its money? "Well we get a bounty. er . . . commission for every purchase the child makes," said a company representative who asked not to be named.

However, companies such as Zapme, a startup endeavouring to supply 7,000 junior US schools with free PCs and high-speed Internet access, cannot afford the luxury of shunning advertising. It will use advertising and electronic commerce to finance free PCs and Internet access to schools that could not otherwise afford it. "We believe that we can offer advertising and electronic commerce in a responsible manner," said Mr Frank Vigil, president of Zapme.

For instance, when advertising clothing such as jeans, an ad banner could include a history of the Levi's, rather that pressuring the kid for a quick sale. The endgame is the same, however, to get the child or its parent to part with money.

Still, it may be foolish to resist the onslaught of children's electronic commerce. Instead, efforts may be better spent trying to safe guard kids from dangers of the Net, according to Mr Charles Hamlin, president of NFO Interactive.

One obvious danger is that when searching for Toys on a popular search engine such as Excite.com one page returned is "Online Sex Store Catalog - your nights will never be the same again". In fact, in a recent survey four out of 10 page returns on popular search engines delivered adult toys links.

JuniorNet's attitude is that any access to the World Wide Web gives children access to potentially harmful material. Its service confines its users to its private walled off network.

"The loophole in most of the portal sites is that kids may be safe on the site but once the child can link out to the web anything can happen," said Bruce Thurlby, chief operations officer of JuniorNet.

"Full Web access for 3-10 year-olds is dangerous in our view." For Zapme the solution is to provide restricted access to its 10,000 best educational websites. Other online services advocate the use of special programs that screen out indecent material such as CyberPatrol. Still others, such as Disney leave the job of policing the child to the parent.

However, all services are making efforts to prevent predators from gaining access to children online. Sites such as Disney's ClubBlast and Zapme encourage customers to use online nicknames. They warn subscribers never to provide personal details over the Net and require subscribers to provide a credit-card number to log on to the service.

"The credit card is essential to us because it gives us a way to trace the subscriber should there be any problems," said Mr Thurlby.

Furthermore, most provide constant monitoring of online chat groups and services such as ClubBalst and JuniorNet do not allow kids to carry out e-mail conversations with new friends without parental approval. So if a child meets a new friend online and wants to e-mail them on a regular basis both kids' parents are e-mailed a request form which has to be filled and returned to the online company before the conversing can begin.

"The Internet is a wonderful medium, you can ignore it or you can embrace it," said Mr Ken Goldstein, vice-president and general manager of Disney Online. "I would hate to think that kids would miss the magic because of these concerns."

Still, if Internet marketing goes the same route as television marketing, the Net may lose that magic.

Niall McKay can be reached at irish-times@niall.org