While childrens health advocates have been highly critical of TV advertising aimed at children, a new report suggests food marketers have an effective new medium to reach the youngest of consumers -- the Internet.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has released the first comprehensive analysis of the nature and scope of online food advertising to children, to help inform the decision making process for policymakers, advocates, and industry.
The report, "It's Child's Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children," found that more than eight out of ten of the top food brands that target children through TV advertising also use branded websites to market to children online.
Unlike traditional TV advertising, these corporate-sponsored websites offer extensive opportunities for visitors to spend an unlimited amount of time interacting with specific food brands in more personal and detailed ways.
For example, the study documents the broad use of "advergames" -- online games in which a company's product or brand characters are featured, found on 73 percent of the websites -- and viral marketing -- encouraging children to contact their peers about a specific product or brand, found on 64 percent of sites.
In addition, a variety of other advertising and marketing tactics are employed on these sites, including sweepstakes and promotions, memberships, on-demand access to TV ads, and incentives for product purchase.
"Online advertising's reach isn't as broad as that of television, but it's much deeper," said Vicky Rideout, vice president and director of Kaiser's Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health, who oversaw the research.
"Without good information about what this new world of advertising really looks like, there can't be effective oversight or policymaking, whether by the industry or by government," she noted. The advertising industry has announced that it is developing more detailed voluntary guidelines for online marketing to children, expected to be released shortly.
"Young children are increasingly the target of advertising and marketing because of the amount of money they spend themselves, the influence they have on their parents spending and because of the money they will spend when they grow up," said Sharon Beder, author of the report.
"While this child-targeted marketing used to concentrate on sweets and toys, it now includes clothes, shoes, a range of fast foods, sports equipment, computer products and toiletries as well as adult products such as cars and credit cards," she wrote in the book.
The Kaiser study is among the first to raise the concern about Internet marketing directed at children. It includes detailed analysis of 77 websites that, according to Nielson NetRatings, received more than 12.2 million visits from children ages 2-11 in the 2nd quarter of 2005.
About three-quarters of the websites in the study included advergames, ranging from one to more than 60 games per site. In total, the sites in the study contained 546 games featuring one or more food brands, such as the Chips Ahoy Soccer Shootout, Chuck E. Cheese's Tic Tac Toe, the M&M;'s Trivia Game, and the Pop-Tart Slalom.
For example, on Kellogg's FunKtown children can "race against time while collecting delicious Kellogg's cereal," and at the Lucky Charms site they can play Lucky's Magic Adventure and "learn the powers of all eight charms" found in Lucky Charms cereal. To encourage additional time spent at the website, many of the games promote repeat playing, offer multiple levels of play, or suggest other games the visitor might enjoy.
Almost two-thirds of sites in the study use viral marketing, in which children are encouraged to send emails to their friends about a product, or invite them to visit the company's website. For example, at juicyfruit.com users were encouraged to "Send a friend this fruitylicious site!" and told that if they "send this site to 5 friends" they would get a code that could then be used to access additional features on the site.
Other sites encourage young users to invite friends to help them "redecorate" their online "rooms," challenge them to play an advergame on the site, or send them an "e-card" featuring the company's brand or spokescharacters.
For example, on Keebler's Hollow Tree website, children are invited to send a friend some "Elfin Magic" in a birthday or seasonal greeting.
The Kaiser study follows a December 2005 study conducted at the request of Congress and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report, Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity?, provides the most comprehensive review to date of the scientific evidence on the influence of food marketing on diets and diet-related health of children and youth.
The report found that current food and beverage marketing practices puts children's long-term health at risk.
"If America's children and youth are to develop eating habits that help them avoid early onset of diet-related chronic diseases, they have to reduce their intake of high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks, fast foods, and sweetened drinks, which make up a high proportion of the products marketed to them," the report concluded.
