Mapping the landscape of digital food marketing: Investigating exposure of digital food and drink advertisements to Norwegian children and adolescents

This report presents the results of a pilot mapping of the current digital marketing landscape of food and drinks directed at children between 3-17 years in Norway. The study follows the “Investigate Exposure”-step in the CLICK framework developed by the WHO European Office for Noncommunicable Diseases. Advertisement data were captured from 47 participating children’s devices through a mobile application. The results show that a total of 5076 advertisements were captured during the data collection period. 1 in 10 advertisements promoted food and drink products, which were primarily captured from YouTube, and the children spent on average 13 seconds viewing them. These food and drink advertisements promoted a large variety of food categories outlined by the WHO’s Nutrient Profile Model. According to WHO’s guidelines, 8 in 10 food and drink advertisements were not permitted to be marketed to children. That is, a large majority of the marketing promoted unhealthy foods and drinks, high in fat, salt, and sugar. The top 10 food products identified in the sample were pizza, processed meat, beef burger, processed fish, ice cream, sweetened drinks without added sugar, milk chocolate, energy drinks, oatmeal, and sweetened drinks with added sugar. According to Norwegian guidelines, 1 in 10 food and drink advertisements were not acceptable marketing to children under the age of 13. That is, out of the total food and drink advertisements 9% were not acceptable according to Norwegian guidelines, compared to 82% according to WHO’s guidelines. Thus, the findings highlight the differences between Norway and the World Health Organization, where the latter operate by stricter guidelines. The results may indicate that the current Norwegian self-regulation is not sufficiently protecting children, especially those above 13 years, against advertisements of unhealthy food and drinks. This report suggests that Norwegian guidelines ought to be better aligned with the WHO’s guidelines, through actions such as re-defining and improve regulation of unacceptable food and drink advertisement to children, as well as re-considering the age concerns regarding food and drink marketing