Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents - Federal Trade ...

Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents
C. Expenditures Analyzed by Promotional Activity Groups
The Commission’s Special Order sought information about 20 separate promotional
activity categories. For purposes of this Report, these categories have been consolidated into
six groups: 1) Traditional Measured Media, consisting of television, radio, and print advertising;
2) New Media, consisting of company-sponsored websites, Internet, digital, word-of-mouth,
and viral marketing; 3) Packaging and In-Store Marketing; 4) Premiums; 5) Other Traditional
Promotions, consisting of product placements, movie theater, video, and video game advertising,
character or cross-promotion license fees, athletic sponsorships, celebrity endorsement fees,
events, philanthropic activities tied to branding opportunities, and other miscellaneous marketing
expenditures; and 6) In-School Marketing. Figure II.4 shows how the reporting companies
allocated the $1.6 billion in youth-directed food marketing across the six promotional activity
groups. Appendix Tables C.1 and C.2 provide detailed data on these expenditures within each of
the 20 individual promotional activity categories for each food group and each age category. 26
Figure II.4: Reported Total Youth Marketing Expenditures by Promotional Activity Group
(In Millions of Dollars)
New Media
$76.6
5%
Traditional Measured Media
$852.9
53%
Other Traditional Promotions
$241.2
15%
Premiums
$66.9
4%
Within these six promotional activity groups, Figure II.5 illustrates the percentage of total
spending within each group contributed by each food category. The figure demonstrates, for
example, that carbonated and non-carbonated beverages comprised a majority of the reported in-
school expenditures, that cereals had the largest reported premium expenditures, and that nearly
all food categories used traditional measured media, primarily television. Appendix Table C.3
provides further detail on expenditures within the six promotional activity groups.
12
In-School
$185.5
11%
In-Store and
Packaging/ Labeling
$195.4
12%