Food ads & kids on the Web

Eighty-five percent of brands like Snickers, Lucky Charms, and Cheetos targeting kids on TV have a presence on the Web, according to a pioneering study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "It's Child's Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children." "More than 500 'advergames' such as Hershey's Syrup Squirt, LifeSavers Boardwalk Bowling and M&Ms Trivia Game were offered on 77 Web sites," USATODAY reports in its coverage of the study. These immersive "ads" – games, coloring pages, screensavers, etc. that kids can play and otherwise interact with can be much more compelling to children than 15- or 30-second TV ads, and kids often can't tell the difference between advertising and non-promotional content, researchers find. "Policymakers and health experts increasingly are concerned about the role food advertising plays in childhood obesity. About 25 million children, or one-third of children and teens in the USA, are either overweight or on the brink of becoming so," USATODAY adds. (For more on this, see "Advergames & 'the nag factor'" in my 2/11/05 issue.) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that obesity presents a real dilemma to pediatricians, a reluctance to talk with obese patients and their parents (the Post looks at the reasons).