Underage Access to Online Alcohol Marketing Content: AYouTube Case Study

Abstract — Aims: With the proliferation of the Internet and online social media use, alcohol advertisers are now marketing their pro-ducts through social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. As a result, new recommendations have been made by the Federal Trade Commission concerning the self-regulation of digital marketing strategies, including content management on social and digital media sites. The current study sought to determine whether alcohol companies were implementing the self-imposed mandates that they have developed for online marketing. Specifically, we examined whether alcohol companies were implementing effective strat-egies that would prevent persons under the minimum legal drinking age in the USA from accessing their content on YouTube. Methods:We assessed 16 alcohol brands (beer and liquor) associated with the highest prevalence of past 30 day underage alcohol con-sumption in the USA. Fictitious YouTube user profiles were created and assigned the ages of 14, 17 and 19. These profiles then attempted to access and view the brewer-sponsored YouTube channels for each of the 16 selected brands. Results: Every underage profile, regardless of age, was able to successfully subscribe to each of the 16 (100%) official YouTube channels. On average, two-thirds of the brands ’ channels were successfully viewed (66.67%). Conclusion: Alcohol industry provided online marketing content is predominantly accessible to underage adolescents. Thus, brewers are not following some of the self-developed and self-imposed man-dates for online advertising by failing to implement effective age-restriction measures (i.e. age gates)