Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising in National Magazines in the United States, 2001–2011

Abstract

Objectives. To update public health surveillance of alcohol advertising to underage populations by assessing alcohol industry compliance with their voluntary guidelines for US magazine advertisements from 2001 to 2011.

Methods. Using advertising industry standard sources The Nielsen Company and MediaMark, we evaluated youth exposure to alcohol advertising, and relative advertising exposure of youths versus adults, in 168 national magazines.

Results. From 2001 to 2011, magazine alcohol advertising seen by youths declined by 62.9%, from 5.4 billion impressions (single person seeing a single advertisement) to 2.0 billion impressions. Most alcohol advertising (65.1% of ads) was for spirits (e.g., vodka, whiskey). Since 2008, alcohol companies achieved 100% compliance with their limited guidelines. However, youths were overexposed to magazine advertising relative to adults on average 73% of the time.

Conclusions. Despite improving compliance with placement guidelines in national editions of the 168 measured magazines, most youth exposure to magazine alcohol advertising exceeded adult exposure, per capita. If alcohol companies adopted stricter guidelines based on public health risk assessments, youths would not be overexposed to alcohol advertising in magazines.

Each year in the United States, excessive alcohol use is responsible for an average of 4350 deaths and 263 500 years of potential life lost among persons under the legal drinking age of 21 years.¹ In 2010 alone, underage drinking cost the US economy $24.3 billion.² Moreover, reducing underage drinking is an important public health goal because it is associated with a wide range of health and social problems, including motor vehicle accidents and other unintentional injuries, violence perpetration, and suicide completions.³

Risk factors for underage drinking initiation identified in previous research include parent drinking,⁴ peer drinking,⁵ personality characteristics such as low self-esteem,⁶ and environmental factors such as availability, pricing, and other alcohol policies.⁷ Alcohol marketing exposure has been prospectively associated with both increased drinking and negative health consequences as a result of drinking.⁸ Multiple longitudinal studies link exposure to alcohol marketing to an increased risk that youths will initiate drinking or drink more heavily if already drinking.⁹

Alcohol advertising in magazines represents a special case of alcohol media exposure. First, magazines are a highly targeted medium with broad reach, providing an efficient means of reaching segmented audience groups. For example, Sports Illustrated offers advertisers a platform that reaches a high concentration of young men, and In Touch and Life & Style magazines reach a high concentration of young women.¹⁰ Unlike television advertisements, magazine advertisements persist in print and may be viewed multiple times as the magazine is passed along to multiple readers.¹¹ In addition, magazine advertisements have a greater influence on people’s self-reported perceived favorability of advertised brands than television and online advertisements, thereby increasing purchase intentions.¹²

Advertisers do not view different media platforms as separate but rather as components of an integrated advertising system in which each component provides certain strengths.¹³ Television is used to drive up repetition of ad exposure (frequency) with a relatively large audience (reach).¹⁴ Digital (Web-based advertising) is a vehicle for user engagement.¹³ However, print advertising offers broad reach, with targeted editorial alignment for the brand that is unmatched by digital advertising.^12,15

Although alcohol advertising in magazines is declining because of a decrease in print magazine readership and simultaneous growth of online publications and other digital media,¹⁶ the alcohol industry spent $3.3 billion on product advertising in magazines between 2001 and 2011. This amounts to 2.4% of the alcohol industry’s total promotional budget, which makes magazine advertising the third largest advertising-spending category after television (25.5% of budget) and radio (3.7%), with newspapers, digital, point-of-sale signage, and other promotional activities making up smaller proportions of the budget.¹⁷

Multiple research studies have found associations between youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines and youth drinking motives, expectations, and behaviors. For example, the frequency of exposure to beer advertising in magazines was associated with increased awareness and recall of beer advertisements among a cohort of eighth graders in South Dakota.¹⁸ In this same cohort, magazine advertising exposure was prospectively associated with more frequent drinking over 12 months of follow-up among participants who reported alcohol consumption at baseline.¹⁹ A cross-sectional study of Australian youths aged 12 to 17 years found that exposure to magazine advertising was associated with both drinking status (never having consumed alcohol vs consuming any alcohol) and drinking in the past 4 weeks.²⁰ In that study, the association between magazine advertising and drinking status was particularly strong for girls.²⁰ Taken together, these studies suggest that advertising in magazines is associated not only with initiation of alcohol consumption but also with increased drinking quantities among youths.

Trade associations for each major alcohol type (beer, distilled spirits, wine) adopted a set of voluntary guidelines for advertising content and placement.^21–23 These guidelines suggest that alcohol companies place advertisements only in media for which the composition of the legal drinking-age audience (≥ 21 years) is proportional to the legal drinking-age adult population (≥ 21 years). This limit was initially set at 70% to reflect the percentage of the population older than 21 years for the years 2003 to 2010. In other words, the underage audience composition should not make up more than 30% of the audience because youths younger than 21 years make up about 30% of the total population. Effective with the release of the 2010 US Census population estimates, this has meant restricting ad placements to media in which the measured legal-age audience is at least 71.6% of the total audience and the audience aged younger than 21 years is 28.4% or less of the total audience.

These limited industry guidelines do not consider the age groups typically measured in media audience surveys, nor are they based on public health risk assessments. It is important to note that youths aged 12 to 20 years, the age group at greatest risk for initiation and escalation of drinking,²⁴ make up only 12.6% of the population aged 12 years and older.²⁵ In contrast with surveys of television and radio audiences, magazine audience surveys measure only readers aged 12 years and older. Therefore, the alcohol industry’s limits of 30% and 28.4% permit an audience concentration that is more than double the percentage of at-risk youths in the measured population.²⁶ This can result in substantial “overexposure” of youths (per capita youth exposure that is greater than per capita adult exposure) while still being considered “compliant” under the voluntary guidelines. For this reason, the National Research Council, as well as attorneys general from 24 states and territories, recommended that the alcohol industry improve their guidelines by restricting advertising to media in which the youth audience (aged 12–20 years) is 15% or less of the total audience.^27,28 This suggested underage audience limit, based on public health risk assessments, will be referred to as the “recommended limit.”

In 2006, the US Congress passed the STOP (Sober Truth On Preventing Underage Drinking) Act, which included a requirement that the secretary of health and human services annually obtain and report on the exposure of youths to advertising that encourages alcohol consumption. This study is a key component of this reporting.

In keeping with the STOP Act mandate to monitor alcohol advertising, we examined (1) total exposure of youths (aged 12–20 years) to alcohol advertising in magazines from 2001 to 2011; (2) the proportion of ads and advertising exposure that were not in compliance with the alcohol industry voluntary ad placement guidelines; (3) the proportion of ads that overexposed youths aged 12 to 20 years, relative to adults aged 21 years and older, on a per capita basis; and (4) youth advertising exposure by beverage type.

METHODS

Unless otherwise specified, the term “youth” refers to someone aged 12 to 20 years and “adult” to a person of legal drinking age (21 years and older). The data sources and methods in this study are based on standard advertising industry practices used to place and track advertising in magazines. We licensed data on alcohol advertisements from Nielsen (New York, NY). Nielsen monitors publications with a circulation of at least 250 000 copies that have requested this monitoring service. We obtained data on the demographic characteristics of magazine readers for adults aged 18 years and older from the Survey of the American Consumer, and for youths aged 12 to 17 years from the TwelvePlus survey, both of which are national population surveys conducted by GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence LLC (New York, NY).²⁹

We matched the audience data to occurrence data by publication title and issue date. We included in the analysis only advertisements promoting alcohol products; we excluded corporate advertisements and advertisements with a primary focus on “responsibility” because such ads were deemed by the researchers not to promote the sale and consumption of alcohol. Finally, we included only product advertisements that appeared in the full-run national editions of measured publications, using issue-specific data on advertising placements licensed from Kantar Media Intelligence (London, UK). This analysis excluded placements in so-called “demographic editions” for which GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence audience estimates were not available. Given these exclusion criteria, we based data in this report on advertisements that appeared in 168 national magazines accounting for 85% of all magazine advertising expenditures between 2001 and 2011.

Measures

We defined an advertisement as a single occurrence of an ad placement in a magazine without regard to its size or location within the publication. We categorized alcohol advertisements by product type, including alcopops (e.g., Mike’s Hard Lemonade), beer, spirits, and wine, based on Impact Databank (M. Shanken Publications, New York, NY), an alcohol-industry market research publication.³⁰ We calculated youth audience composition by dividing the estimated number of readers aged 12 to 20 years by the estimated total readership aged 12 years and older. (Note that advertisers generally assume that the audience for an advertisement is the same as the audience for the magazine).³¹

We considered an advertisement to be compliant with industry voluntary guidelines for magazine placements if the youth audience composition (aged 12–20 years) as a proportion of all readers (aged ≥ 12 years) was 30% or less prior to October 1, 2011, or 28.4% or less thereafter. The alcohol industry guidelines are fixed at 30% and 28.4% even though magazine audience surveys measure only readers aged 12 years and older. Thus, a compliant ad by the alcohol industry’s voluntary guidelines permits an audience concentration that is more than double the percentage of at-risk youths aged 12 to 20 years. If the proportion of a magazine’s youth readership (aged 12–20 years) exceeded the voluntary guideline limits, we considered the advertisement to be noncompliant. We refer to youth exposure to alcohol advertisements from compliant advertisements as “compliant exposure” and youth exposure from noncompliant advertisements as “noncompliant exposure.”

We defined an advertising “impression” as a single person seeing a single advertisement. We calculated “gross impressions” by summing advertising impressions for all the estimated readers of the 168 magazines included in this study, accounting for multiple exposures to a single person. Gross rating points (GRPs) are a standard advertising industry metric to measure impressions in relation to the target population; thus, GRPs are measures of the per capita exposure of an advertising campaign. It is standard in media research to measure exposure as “potential” exposure—for example, the person’s exposure was proportionate to the overall potential population exposure.¹⁴ In this study, we calculated GRPs for both adults and youths by dividing gross impressions for the age group by the total population and multiplying by 100. A GRP ratio is a measure of relative per capita advertising exposure, calculated as the number of per capita youth impressions divided by the number of per capita impressions for adults. GRP ratios above 1 indicated higher levels of per capita youth advertising exposure relative to adult advertising exposure.

We classified an ad as “overexposing” if the youth audience composition was more than 15% but less than the alcohol industry guideline limit. This audience composition range corresponds to a GRP ratio greater than 1, indicating that youths saw more alcohol ads than adults per capita (i.e., after adjustment for the relative sizes of the populations). We defined “overexposure” as youth exposure generated from overexposing ads.

Analysis

We calculated total youth exposure to alcohol advertising by summing gross impressions or gross rating points for all alcohol advertisements and for advertisements by alcohol type. We defined noncompliant exposure as impressions (single persons seeing a single advertisement) resulting from ads that appeared in magazines in which more than 30% or more than 28.4% of the readership aged 12 years and older was aged 12 to 20 years old. We calculated noncompliant youth exposure by summing gross impressions or gross rating points for total noncompliant ads and noncompliant ads by alcohol type. We calculated overexposure by summing gross impressions or gross rating points for total overexposing ads. Finally, to show the relationship between overexposure and different audience composition thresholds, we calculated relative exposure (GRP ratios) for youths versus adults for advertisements placed at 5 different audience composition ranges: youth compositions of 15% or less, more than 15% to 20%, more than 20% to 25%, more than 25% up to and including the limit (30% or 28.4%), and above the limit (e.g., noncompliant).

RESULTS

The total number of magazine alcohol advertisements declined 31.4%, from 3401 in 2001 to 2333 in 2011 (Table 1). Total youth exposure to alcohol advertising declined 62.9%, from 5.4 billion to 2.0 billion impressions (Figure 1, Table 1). The percentage of alcohol advertisements that were not compliant with the alcohol industry’s voluntary guidelines declined from 10.3% in 2001 to 0.0% in 2008 to 2011. There have been zero noncompliant alcohol advertising placements and zero noncompliant youth exposures in magazines from 2008 to 2011 (Table 1).

TABLE 1—

Noncompliant and Overexposing Advertisements and Exposures, Comparing Alcohol Industry Voluntary Guidelines With the Suggested Guidelines From the Attorneys General and National Academy of Medicine: United States, 2001–2011

Year	No. of Advertisements	Noncompliant Ads, No. (%)	Overexposing Ads, No. (%)	Youth Exposure (×1000)	Noncompliant Exposure (×1000), No. (%)	Overexposing Exposure (×1000), No. (%)
2001	3 401	351 (10.3)	1 384 (40.7)	5 398 154	1 090 878 (20.2)	3 740 745 (69.3)
2002	3 420	375 (11.0)	1 406 (41.1)	4 910 944	1 252 707 (25.5)	3 042 962 (62.0)
2003	3 634	213 (5.9)	1 187 (32.7)	3 926 794	610 470 (15.5)	2 797 124 (71.2)
2004	3 780	106 (2.8)	1 225 (32.4)	3 978 112	170 461 (4.3)	3 098 453 (77.9)
2005	3 534	28 (0.8)	1 254 (35.5)	3 108 989	85 812 (2.8)	2 479 068 (79.7)
2006	3 617	20 (0.6)	1 174 (32.5)	3 048 479	59 800 (2.0)	2 424 576 (79.5)
2007	3 750	17 (0.5)	1 350 (36.0)	3 564 652	48 246 (1.4)	2 972 336 (83.4)
2008	2 985	0 (0.0)	896 (30.0)	2 629 681	0 (0.0)	2 004 024 (76.2)
2009	2 376	0 (0.0)	659 (27.7)	2 413 112	0 (0.0)	1 593 866 (66.1)
2010	2 159	0 (0.0)	441 (20.4)	1 887 692	0 (0.0)	1 323 513 (70.1)
2011	2 333	0 (0.0)	593 (25.4)	2 004 071	0 (0.0)	1 438 172 (71.8)
2001–2007 total (mean %)	25 136	1 110 (4.4)	8 980 (35.7)	27 936 124	3 318 374 (11.9)	20 555 264 (73.6)
2008–2011 total (mean %)	9 853	0 (0.0)	2 589 (26.3)	8 934 556	0 (0.0)	6 359 575 (71.2)
All years total (mean %)	34 989	1 110 (3.2)	11 569 (33.1)	36 870 680	3 318 374 (9.0)	26 914 839 (73.0)

Note. Youth exposure is advertising impressions (in thousands) for ages 12–20 years. A noncompliant advertisement was one placed in a magazine with the underage audience exceeding 30% of the total audience for publications from 2001 through the third quarter of 2011, or exceeding 28.4% of the total audience thereafter. An overexposing ad was one placed in a magazine in which the per capita exposure (gross rating points) for underage readers exceeded the per capita exposure for legal-age (aged ≥ 21 years) readers.

Source. Nielsen (New York, NY) and GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence LLC (New York, NY).

FIGURE 1—

Total Youth Advertising Impressions by Exposure Category, 2001–2011

Note. Noncompliant advertisements were those placed in magazines with an underage audience composition in excess of 30% (before June 2011) or 28.4% (thereafter). Overexposing ads were those placed in magazines in which per capita exposure among those aged 12–20 y exceeded per capita exposure among those aged ≥ 21 y. These are mutually exclusive categories.

Source. Nielsen (New York, NY) and GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence LLC (New York, NY).

Meanwhile, in 2001, 69.3% of youth exposure to alcohol advertising came from overexposing ads, and this proportion remained on average about the same over the 10-year period (Table 1). Overexposing advertisements declined 57.2%, from 1384 to 593. Total overexposure declined by 61.6%, from 3.7 million to 1.4 million (Table 1). Over the 10-year period, 73.0% of total youth exposure exceeded the recommended limit from the attorneys general and the National Research Council (Table 1).

Table 2 shows the ratio of youth-to-adult exposure for advertising placed in magazines with different ranges of youth audience composition. From 2001 to 2011, ads placed in magazines with a youth audience composition of 15% or less had a GRP ratio averaging 0.36. Thus, youths saw on average 64% less advertising per capita than adults when alcohol ads were placed in magazines with a youth audience composition of 15% or less. Ads placed in magazines with a youth audience composition of more than 15% to 20% had on average 18% higher per capita exposure for youths than for adults (GRP ratio = 1.18). Between 2001 and 2011, ads placed in magazines in all youth composition ranges of more than 15% generated more per capita exposure for youths than for adults.

TABLE 2—

Relative Alcohol Advertising Exposure for Youths Aged 12 to 20 Years Compared With Adults Aged 21 Years and Older for Advertisements Placed at Different Youth Audience Composition Limits: United States, 2001–2011

Year	15% and Under	> 15%–20%	> 20%–25%	> 25% up to and Including Limita	Over Limita	Overall
2001	0.36	1.06	1.69	2.06	2.98	1.25
2002	0.35	1.25	1.63	2.11	2.61	1.16
2003	0.31	1.28	1.65	2.26	2.97	1.08
2004	0.35	1.17	1.56	2.14	3.15	0.98
2005	0.31	1.11	1.54	2.03	2.62	0.88
2006	0.32	1.17	1.64	2.08	2.57	0.89
2007	0.32	1.14	1.54	2.01	2.52	0.95
2008	0.37	1.17	1.71	2.22	NA	0.86
2009	0.48	1.15	1.56	2.20	NA	0.87
2010	0.39	1.26	1.75	1.96	NA	0.82
2011	0.41	1.22	1.74	2.04	NA	0.85
2001–2007, mean	0.33	1.17	1.61	2.10	2.77	1.03
2008–2011, mean	0.42	1.20	1.69	2.11	NA	0.85
All years, mean	0.36	1.18	1.64	2.10	2.77	0.96

Note. NA = not applicable—no advertisements placed in this youth composition range. The data show relative alcohol advertising exposure measured as a gross rating points ratio. This is a ratio of per capita advertising exposure calculated as exposure among those aged 12–20 years divided by exposure among those aged ≥ 21 years. A value of 1.00 indicates equal per capita exposure to both age groups; values below 1.00 indicate that youths aged 12–20 years had less exposure per capita than adults aged ≥ 21 years; values above 1.00 indicate that youths aged 12–20 years had more exposure per capita than adults aged ≥ 21 years.

Source. Nielsen (New York, NY) and GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence LLC (New York, NY).

^aThe voluntary audience composition limit was 30% up to October 2011 and 28.4% thereafter.

From 2001 to 2011, most of the alcohol advertisements in magazines were for spirits (65.1%), followed by wine (20.7%), beer (12.7%), and alcopops (1.5%; Table 3). There were 22 780 ad placements for spirits, producing 27 billion youth exposures. Of those ads, 884 were noncompliant, contributing 2.6 million noncompliant impressions, and 8769 were overexposing ads, generating 20 million overexposing impressions (Table 3). Although alcopop ads accounted for the smallest percentage of total advertisements seen by youths, these sweetened alcohol brands generated the highest concentration of noncompliant ads (9.7%) and noncompliant exposures (14.0%) compared with those for beer, spirits, and wines.

TABLE 3—

Noncompliant and Overexposing Ads as a Percentage of Total Advertisements and Noncompliant and Overexposing Exposures as a Percentage of Total Youth Exposure by Alcohol Type, 10-Year Average: United States, 2001–2011

Type	Advertisements, No. (Column %)	Noncompliant Ads, No. (Row %)	Overexposing Ads, No. (Row %)	Youth Exposure (×1000), No. (Column %)	Noncompliant Exposure (×1000), No. (Row %)	Overexposing Exposure (×1000), No. (Row %)
Alcopops	524 (1.5)	51 (9.7)	358 (68.3)	1 042 658 (2.8)	145 720 (14.0)	707 075 (67.8)
Beer	4 448 (12.7)	175 (3.9)	2 054 (46.2)	6 863 575 (18.6)	546 924 (8.0)	5 304 380 (77.3)
Spirits	22 780 (65.1)	884 (3.9)	8 769 (38.5)	27 282 593 (74.0)	2 625 730 (9.6)	20 136 945 (73.8)
Wine	7 237 (20.7)	0 (0.0)	388 (5.4)	1 681 854 (4.6)	0 (0.0)	766 439 (45.6)
Total	34 989	1 110 (3.2)	11 569 (33.1)	36 870 680	3 318 372 (9.0)	26 914 839 (73.0)

Note. A noncompliant advertisement was one placed in a magazine with the underage audience exceeding 30% of the total audience for publications from 2001 through the third quarter of 2011, or exceeding 28.4% of the total audience thereafter. An overexposing ad was one placed in a magazine in which the per capita exposure (gross rating points) for underage readers exceeded the per capita exposure for legal-age (aged ≥ 21 years) readers. An advertising impression refers to a single person seeing a single advertisement.

Source. Nielsen (New York, NY) and GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence LLC (New York, NY).

Over the 10-year period, the proportion of noncompliant ads remained relatively low—3.2% on average—whereas nearly 1 of every 3 (33.1%) were overexposing ads. On average, 68.3% of all alcopop ads, 46.2% of beer ads, 38.5% of spirits ads, and 5.4% of wine ads overexposed youths. About 3 of 4 youth exposures to beer and spirits ads overexposed youths (Table 3). Spirits accounted for 74.0% of all youth exposure and beer ads accounted for 18.6%, whereas alcopops accounted for 2.8% and wine 4.6% (Table 3). In 2011, youths saw 2.7% fewer spirits advertisements and 81.6% fewer wine ads per capita than adults; however, youths saw 10.7% more alcopop advertising and 7.1% more beer advertisements (data not shown).

One consideration is the choice of all adults aged 21 years and older as the reference group. If alcohol advertisers are targeting young adults aged 21 to 34 years, then another useful comparison is calculating the proportion of youth exposure that resulted from ads that were more likely to be seen by youths than by young adults aged 21 to 34 years. We found that 33% of youth exposure to alcohol advertising was a result of placing ads in magazines in which youths were more likely to see the ads than young adults (data not shown). Thus, there is room for improvement even when using this reference group for comparison.

DISCUSSION

The alcohol industry achieved 100% compliance with its limited guidelines for ads placed in magazines from 2008 to 2011. Since the adoption of these limited guidelines in 2003, both alcohol companies and the publishing industry have been adjusting advertising practices. The publishing industry has offered the alcohol companies “demographic” editions of publications such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine, which are sent only to subscribers of legal drinking age.³² It appears that in 2008, these changes by alcohol companies and the publishing industry finally achieved their desired effects.

However, from 2001 to 2011, almost 1 in 3 alcohol advertisements and 3 in 4 advertising exposures exceeded the recommended limit of the attorneys general and the National Research Council and, as a result, overexposed youths to alcohol advertising relative to adults. Total youth exposure to alcohol advertising in magazines would drop substantially if all advertising that exceeded the recommended limit were eliminated.

The overexposure of youths to alcohol advertising in magazines has been previously reported in several studies.³³ Although there has been a general reduction in alcohol advertising in magazines and a specific decline in youth exposure to noncompliant alcohol advertising in magazines, there has been no change in the current voluntary standard used by the alcohol industry to reduce youth overexposure to alcohol advertising. One exception is Beam Global Spirits, producer of Jim Beam Bourbon and other spirits. In 2008, Beam adopted a 25% youth composition limit for advertising in magazines and other media venues (TV, radio). Beam ads achieved high levels of compliance because of this stricter standard.³⁴ Only 56% of youth exposure to Beam advertising resulted from overexposing advertisements—a lower proportion than for other spirits brands. Beam was able to achieve this reduced exposure without increasing advertising costs.³⁴

Wine advertising in magazines generated considerably less youth overexposure than other alcohol categories. Unlike other product categories, wine advertisements emphasized consumption as a complement to food, concentrating ads in magazines such as Food & Wine and Wine Spectator, as well as literary magazines including The New Yorker. These magazines catered to an older audience.

By contrast, alcopop advertisements were more likely than any other category to be noncompliant, and were more likely than other alcohol types to overexpose youths relative to adults. This is of particular concern because alcopop brands are consumed disproportionately by youths relative to adults.³⁵

The findings in this study raise questions about the efficacy of the alcohol industry’s current voluntary guidelines to reduce youth exposure to alcohol advertising. As was noted by the National Research Council²⁷ and by the attorneys general of 24 US states and territories,²⁸ a youth audience composition limit of 15% is more proportional to the at-risk population of youths. According to analyses from the present study, alcohol advertisements placed in magazines with a youth composition limit of 15% or less generated on average 64% less advertising exposure per capita for youths compared with adults, whereas alcohol advertising placed above this limit was more likely to be seen by youths than adults.

Previous research has demonstrated that the current voluntary guidelines adopted by the alcohol industry enable brands to concentrate advertising in publications with disproportionately large audiences of underage youths aged 18 to 20 years.³³ In 2011, for 11 of the top 25 alcohol brands consumed by underage boys, boys aged 18 to 20 years were exposed to more magazine alcohol advertising per capita than any adult age group.³³ Similar results were found for 16 of the top 25 alcohol brands consumed by underage girls.³³ This overexposure of those aged 18 to 20 years occurred despite 100% overall compliance with current voluntary guidelines.

Continued public health surveillance of youth exposure to alcohol advertising, particularly at the local level and at certain times of the year such as “spring break,” would allow for sustained assessment of youth exposure to alcohol advertising, and inform the planning and evaluation of interventions.

The marketing landscape continues to change, and the Federal Trade Commission has noted that the alcohol industry codes need to evolve to address particularly the growth of digital advertising.¹⁷ However, magazines continue to play an important role in the advertising of alcohol, and the concerns raised in this study point to the need to revisit the voluntary guidelines that allow overexposure of youths despite full compliance.

Limitations

This study has a number of strengths, including the use of industry-standard databases for assessing exposure to alcohol marketing in national magazines and the availability of demographic information on adult and youth readers. At the time this study was submitted, the data we used were 5 years old but covered a time period during which the alcohol industry came into full compliance with its voluntary guidelines. This study represents a baseline for future research into alcohol advertising practices in magazines.

Our findings are subject to at least 3 limitations. Because of the exclusionary criteria (no local, regional, digital, or demographic magazine editions), the patterns that we observed may not be representative of all magazine advertising in the United States. Additionally, advertising audiences were calculated as averages over a 6- or 12-month interval and are not specific to a particular issue of a magazine. No consideration was given to the size (full page, half page, etc.) or location (inside cover, back cover, etc.) of the advertisement. In addition, audience information for a given publication was ascribed to every advertising placement within that publication, when the actual reading patterns and viewing of specific ads may vary by reader, ad size, and location within the magazine. Lastly, the study is limited by its focus on magazines. However, magazines are often used as a key component of campaigns deployed across multiple media (television, print, and online) as a part of an integrated advertising approach.¹²

Public Health Implications

The findings in this report raise questions about the efficacy of the alcohol industry’s current voluntary guidelines to reduce youth exposure to alcohol advertising. Even perfect alcohol industry compliance with the current voluntary guidelines is not sufficient to protect youths from overexposure to alcohol advertising. Given the relevance of magazines as a source of youth exposure to alcohol advertising and the alcohol industry’s continued financial investment in magazine advertising, this study adds to the much-needed surveillance of alcohol industry advertising practices as mandated by the STOP Act. Sustained assessment of youth exposure to alcohol advertising will inform the planning and evaluation of interventions to further reduce youth overexposure to alcohol advertising.