Obesity has become a major health concern in the U.S. and other countries as overweight and obesity rates have increased markedly since the early 1980s. The rise in children's obesity is a particular concern, because overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults, and because obese children are likely to su er from associated medical problems earlier in life.

Food marketing is among the postulated contributors to the rise in obesity rates. Food marketing to children has come under particular scrutiny because children may be more susceptible to marketing and because early eating habits may persist. Some researchers report that children's exposure to television advertising has been increasing along with the rise in children's obesity rates.

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of the exposure of children, ages 2-11, to television advertising based on copyrighted Nielsen Monitor-Plus/Nielsen Media Research audience data from the 2004 television programming season. The detailed data covers the individual advertisements shown during four weeks of national and local ad-supported pro- gramming and includes paid commercials, public service announcements, and promotions for television programming. These data are projected to annual estimates.

Thirty years ago similar assessments of children's television advertising were done for the Federal Trade Commission's 1978 Children's Advertising Rulemaking. Since these research reports were done before the rise in children's obesity, they provide a baseline to measure changes in children's exposure to television advertising.

Since the late 1970s, other marketing has likely changed and new forms of marketing have emerged, including Internet-based advertising techniques. This report does not cover these marketing activities, but the FTC is in the process of conducting another study to attempt to gauge the extent of all forms of marketing to children.

This report can also be used to measure future changes in children's exposure to television advertising as industry, parents, and children react to these health concerns.

Download Children's Exposure to TV Advertising in 1977 and 2004: Information for the Obesity Debate

PDF format, 665KB, 133Pages.

Federal Trade Commission
Bureau of Economics Staff Report, June 2007.

Debra J. Holt
Pauline M. Ippolito
Debra M. Desrochers
Christopher R. Kelley

Concluding Remarks:

This study finds that children's exposure to television advertising has increased somewhat since 1977; however, their exposure to television food advertising has not increased over the same period and is likely to have fallen modestly. We also find that, due to changes in the television landscape, children are getting a substantial portion of their ad exposure from children's shows. In particular, children see about half of their TV food ads on children's programming. In this section we first summarize these and other key findings of our empirical analysis of children's exposure to television advertising. We then discuss how these findings relate to the potential role of television marketing in the prevalence of obesity in U.S. children.

Finally, we draw out a few implications of this evidence for evaluating and guiding research on marketing to children. ...

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