141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

278230
Strategies for reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising on cable television in the United States

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Craig Ross, MBA , Virtual Media Resources, Inc., Natick, MA
David H. Jernigan, PhD , Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Joshua Ostroff , Virtual Media Resources, Inc., Natick, MA
Background: Alcohol advertising has been shown to be an independent risk factor for drinking initiation, binge drinking, and harmful consequences of drinking. Alcohol companies are themselves responsible for regulating their advertising practices in the United States, publishing voluntary guidelines for placement of advertisements in media where the adult audience is proportional to the adult population of the United States. On average,14% of youth exposure to alcohol advertising on cable television, more than 13 billion advertising impressions from 2005-2011, comes from ads that do not comply with alcohol industry guidelines. Methods: We use multivariate modeling to identify factors associated with non-compliant ad placements on cable television and develop strategies for reducing youth exposure from non-compliant ads. Results: The primary factors associated with non-compliant ad placements are placements on low-rated cable programs with unstable audience measurements and placements on networks with high youth audiences. We describe three strategies for reducing youth exposure from non-compliant ad placements due to these factors and demonstrate how much we expect youth exposure to be reduced as a result. Conclusion: Three simple strategies could be implemented by alcohol companies to reduce youth exposure to advertising from non-compliant ad placements. Future monitoring of alcohol advertising should focus on efforts by alcohol advertisers to employ such strategies to improve compliance with their own self-regulatory guidelines.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Describe how alcohol companies and their advertising agencies can reduce youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television in the United States by employing three specific strategies.

Keywords: Media, Alcohol

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been doing policy analysis on alcohol advertising for more than 10 years. My work in this area has been published in more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific publications. I have advised regulators in both the US and European Union. I am currently a PhD candidate in epidemiology. My dissertation research focuses on risk factors for alcohol initiation and developing new epidemiological methods for studying health behaviors.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.