The child having no money is not a problem.

Children are easily influenced and gullible.

A child will pester their parents to buy what they want, potentially for weeks.

Bombarding children with some product, even if for “grown-ups” can make them like it in the future when they’re grown up themselves. It is a very long-term strategy, but it does work since people tend to associate brands from their childhood with quality.

But I agree. Ads directed at kids always seemed distasteful to me, vut it was usually mixed in with “normal” TV or even YouTube ads. But now, when you can’t open a video on YouTube and have it play minimized because it’s “for kids”, you’d expect Google’d also make the ads at least less distasteful than on TV or “grownup” YouTube.