Alcohol Ad Reforms Not Protecting Youth

Impact of new 30% threshold for youth audiences has been mixed.

In September of 2003, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and the Beer Institute announced that they would tighten their standards for maximum youth audiences for alcohol advertising placements from 50% to 30% (or 70% adults).

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University (CAMY) has systematically monitored alcohol advertising on television and in magazines since 2001, using industry-standard databases and methods (Nielsen Media Research for television, TNS Media Intelligence and Mediamark Research Inc. for magazines).

Looking at data from 2001 to 2005, it appears that the new standard had an immediate effect on youth exposure to alcohol advertising in measured magazines, where, over the course of five years, total youth exposure fell by 30%.

However, over the same period, youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television has increased by 48%. This increase has come entirely from the industry placing more alcohol advertising on cable television, where audiences are more narrowly segmented than on traditional broadcast TV.

Alcohol advertising spending on cable television increased by 32% from 2001 to 2005, mostly as a result of distillers shifting advertising from magazines to cable. Distillers’ spending on cable grew by 2,244% and the number of distilled spirits ads on cable rose from 1,973 to 46,854, while their spending in measured magazines declined by 17%, from $254 million to $210 million.

Line Graph

Looking at both magazines and television, the new standard has resulted in no decline in total youth exposure to alcohol advertising. In effect, youth alcohol advertising exposure has moved from magazines, where the 30% standard has had an impact, to cable television, where the standard is ineffective, because 86% of youth exposure to alcohol advertising on cable occurs on programming with youth audiences of less than 30%.

According to Beer Institute president Jeff Becker, the new standard "reflects the demographics of the US population, in which approximately 70 percent of the public is age 21 or older."¹ The group most at risk of early onset of drinking is 12 to 20 year-olds.² Had the standard been proportionate to that group - which is roughly 15% of the population 12 and above - CAMY estimates that youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television would have declined by at least 20%, rather than increasing.³ And total youth exposure to alcohol advertising would have been less in 2005 than in 2001.

November 2006

¹Jeff Becker, Statement of Jeff Becker, President, The Beer Institute, to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Subcommittee on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (Washington, DC: September 30, 2003).
²Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Results from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, Office of Applied Studies (Rockville, MD: 2004).
³Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, Striking a Balance: Protecting Youth From Overexposure to Alcohol Ads and Allowing Alcohol Companies to Reach the Adult Market (Washington, DC: 2005).