Defining child-directed websites: Implications for limits on food advertising to children through the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI)

Companies that participate in the CFBAI have pledged that they will only advertise healthier dietary choices on child-directed third-party websites.1 The majority of companies define child-directed websites as those where 30 % or 35 % or more of total visitors are children under age 12.2 This report examines children’s entertainment websites to determine whether they would qualify as child-directed media according to CFBAI participants. Methods To identify child-directed third-party websites that would be covered by food companies ’ CFBAI pledges, we analyzed exposure data for all websites classified by comScore as “Entertainment- Kids ” websites. comScore designates a website as kids ’ entertainment if the content includes activities and online games for kids, based on examination of the sites by their dictionary team. We used the comScore Media Metrix Key Measures Report to obtain the number of average monthly unique visitors to these websites during the first two quarters of 2012 for the following age groups: 2-11 years, 12-14 years, 2-17 years, and 2+ years.3 To obtain the number of unique visitors in the 2-14 years age group, we added the numbers of unique visitors among youth 2-11 and 12-14 years. The report also provided unique visitors to all kids ’ entertainment websites and the total internet during the same time periods. We analyzed all websites on the comScore Entertainment – Kids report that had at least 100,000 unique child visitors during either the first or second quarter of 2012. In most cases, we examined data for specific URLs (e.g., Nick.com