Cute companions or a marketing lure?

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: When children log onto Webkinz.com, the popular virtual world for children who buy Webkinz stuffed animals, they can send messages to their friends, decorate their virtual rooms and take trivia quizzes. Now, they may also see advertisements.

The Webkinz site began running movie ads on its site in October, with ads for Bee Movie and later for Alvin and the Chipmunks. The ads run on the right side of the home page after users log in. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group based in Boston, is demanding that the site remove the ads.

“One of the reasons why parents buy Webkinz for their children is the expectation that the site will be free from advertising,” said Susan Linn, the campaign’s director. “It’s disappointing that the site is choosing to maximise revenue at the expense of children.”

Webkinz dolls were introduced by a Toronto-based private company called Ganz in the spring of 2005 and have quickly become one of the most popular toys among the elementary-school set. The company uses the stuffed animals as a roundabout way to charge for online content. Instead of asking parents to pay for the Webkinz site by entering a credit card number online, Ganz packages access codes for the site with stuffed animals and trading cards sold in stores.

Other companies, like Mattel and Russ Berrie, have copied the approach. Traffic on Webkinz’s site grew by more than 800% over the last year, totaling 7.29 million unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen Online.

However Webkinz now appears to be in the process of changing its business model. Its stuffed toys are sold at mass retailers like KB Toys, so parents no longer need to hunt them down at small specialty stores.

Experts feel Ganz might be repositioning Webkinz as a mass product so that it could sell the brand to a larger corporation. Parents however began to notice the ads right away. Jacqueline Rupp, a mother of two in Philadelphia, said she would stop allowing her children to use the site if Ganz did not stop all advertising.