This article analyzes how producers of advertising construct children as an advertising audience. Previous research has argued that marketers are bound to present children as competent and savvy to legitimize their own practices. Drawing on interviews with Swedish producers of child-directed online advertising, this study shows that marketers are not destined to portray children as competent as the idea of the vulnerable and incompetent child was an important construction among the Swedish producers. The Swedish producers constructed a multifaceted and ambivalent image of children, mixing the idea of the vulnerable and dependent child with the idea of the competent child. This study contributes to the wider understanding of media producers’ constructed audiences, particularly regarding how culture and media regulation shape the notion of the child audience among producers.