Ads and kid safety in Learnimals

Last updated: July 28, 2026

The free version of Learnimals shows ads. Most apps for children answer the “is this safe?” question with a paragraph about how much they care. This page answers it with the settings that are actually written into the app, so you can judge them yourself.

For the full account of what data leaves the device and which companies are involved, the authoritative document is the Privacy Policy. This page is narrower: it is about advertising.

The three settings that matter

Learnimals uses Google AdMob for advertising. Before the ad SDK starts — not after, which would let the first ad requests slip out unflagged — the app applies three settings, in AdMobManager.swift:

tagForChildDirectedTreatment = true
tagForUnderAgeOfConsent = true
maxAdContentRating = .general

They are not toggles in a dashboard that someone can flip later, and they are not conditional on the user's country or on a consent dialog. They are three lines of code that run on every launch, for every user, before any ad is requested.

What each one means for you

The child-directed flag

tagForChildDirectedTreatment tells Google that all traffic from this app is to be treated as child-directed, in the sense used by the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The practical consequence is on Google's side: ad requests marked this way are excluded from personalized advertising and from advertising-identifier-based targeting. Nothing about a child's behaviour in the app is used to pick which ad they see.

The under-age-of-consent flag

tagForUnderAgeOfConsent is the same declaration for the European framework: the user is below the age of digital consent, so the request must not be treated as an adult's. Both flags are set unconditionally — the app does not ask a child their age and then decide, because asking a four-year-old to self-certify their age is not a safety mechanism.

The content-rating ceiling

maxAdContentRating is an age-rating ceiling on the creatives themselves. .general is AdMob's strictest tier — the equivalent of a “G” rating. It excludes the whole category of ads that parents of small children reasonably dread: gambling, dating, horror, shooters, anything rated for teenagers or above. An ad that does not fit the “suitable for all ages” rating is not eligible to be served here at all.

No tracking prompt, and no advertising identifier

Learnimals never shows the iOS “Allow app to track your activity?” dialog. That is deliberate: the app is for children, it does not need the advertising identifier for anything, and Apple does not permit that prompt in apps aimed at kids. The permission string that would enable it is intentionally absent from the app's build configuration. On top of that, the Google SDK in the app is configured with advertising- identifier collection switched off and ad-personalization signals denied.

Where the ads are, and how often

A banner on some screens in the free tier.
A full-screen ad after every third completed game session — the interval is fixed in the code, not tuned by a server.
Optional rewarded ads. The free tier includes one game play per day. When it is used up, a child can watch an ad to earn a bonus play — up to three per day, then the option stops appearing. Nothing starts playing on its own: a rewarded ad only runs if someone taps the button that asks for it.
No ads at all on Premium. Not fewer — none. Ad code paths are skipped entirely for subscribers.

Learning — letters, numbers, colors and shapes — is unlimited on the free tier. The daily limit and the ads apply to the games.

What this page does not claim

Being straight about the limits is part of the point:

This is not a claim of legal compliance or certification. The settings above are technical configuration, described accurately. Whether any particular regime is satisfied is a legal question, and this page is not a legal opinion. Learnimals holds no COPPA safe-harbour seal and does not claim one.
Ads still come from a third party over the internet. Google serves them, which means the ad SDK communicates with Google's servers and, as our Privacy Policy sets out, device-level identifiers can be involved in delivering and measuring them. “Not personalized” is not the same as “nothing is transmitted”.
Ad content itself is not hand-reviewed by us. The rating ceiling is enforced by Google's classification of each creative, not by a person here watching every ad. If you see an ad that does not belong in a children's app, send it to samozvanecmac@gmail.com with a screenshot — individual creatives can be blocked.
The Privacy Policy is the document that governs. If anything here ever reads as broader than that page, the Privacy Policy is the one to trust, and the mismatch is a bug worth reporting.

Things the app does not have

Some of the risk in children's apps is structural rather than about ads:

No accounts, no sign-in, no email or name to enter.
No chat, no comments, no user-to-user contact of any kind.
No links out to the open web inside the learning and game screens. The two links that exist — to the Terms and the Privacy Policy — are on the subscription screen, which is where an adult reads them.
Nothing a child can buy by tapping. A purchase goes through Apple's own confirmation, with your device passcode, Face ID or Touch ID.

Turning ads off completely

Premium removes advertising entirely, and also lifts the daily game limit and unlocks the 3D number models and AR. Prices are shown inside the app and on its App Store page, so what you see is what applies in your country. Nothing on this website will quote you a price that turns out to be wrong at checkout.

Still not sure?

Write to samozvanecmac@gmail.com. Learnimals is made by one parent, so the reply comes from the person who wrote the code described above — usually within 48 hours.