News Release
Alcohol Spending on Radio Falls But Ads Still Reaching Youth
Spending fell 38% from 2001 to 2006; One-third of Alcohol Ads More Likely to be Heard by Youth than Adults in 2006

Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising on Radio, 2006

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) commissioned Virtual Media Resources to analyze the 337,602 alcohol product advertisements placed on stations in 28 of the largest radio markets in the United States in 2006.

Key Findings

• In 2006, more than a third of advertising placements for alcohol products in 28 of the largest radio markets (120,299 or 35.6%) were on programming that youth¹ ages 12 to 20 were more likely to hear² on a per capita basis than adults.


• Advertisements on programming that youth were more likely to hear than adults accounted for more than half (58%) of youth exposure to alcohol advertising on the radio.


• Approximately one in twelve alcohol advertisements (27,682 or 8%) were on programming with youth audience compositions greater than the alcohol industry's voluntary maximum of 30%, and 18 out of 143 brands placed 20% or more of their advertisements above that threshold.


• Twenty-six brands placed more than half of their advertisements on programming that youth were more likely to hear on a per capita basis than adults.


• Independent monitoring and reporting of performance by individual alcohol brands will encourage alcohol marketers to increase their ability to shield youth from unnecessary exposure to their advertising.

View the full report

Notes

¹For the purposes of this report, "youth" are persons ages 12 to 20 and "adults" are persons age 21 and above. Radio audiences are not measured below age 12.
²Youth are more likely to hear on a per capita basis, or be "overexposed" to, a radio advertisement for alcohol when it is placed on a program where the percentage of underage youth in the audience is greater than the percentage of underage youth in the general population in that radio market. "More likely to hear" or "more popular among" (as well as percentage measures of youth overexposure and other comparisons of adult and youth exposure to alcohol advertising in this report) are based on "gross rating points," an industry-standard measure of how much an audience segment is exposed to advertising per capita. Another way of measuring advertising exposure is "gross impressions" (the total number of times all members of a given audience are exposed to advertising). The adult population will almost always receive far more gross impressions than youth because there are far more adults in the population than youth. Gross rating points are calculated by dividing gross impressions by the relevant population (e.g., persons age 21 and over) and multiplying by 100, thereby leveling the measurement playing field for differently-sized population segments. See Appendix B for a glossary of terms used in this report.