Children’s recognition of advertisements on television and on Web pages

In this paper we consider the issue of advertising to children. Advertising to children raises a number of concerns, in particular the effects of food advertising on children’s eating habits. We point out that virtually all the research into children’s understanding of advertising has focused on traditional television advertisements, but much marketing aimed at children is now via the Internet and little is known about children’s awareness of advertising on the Web. One important component of understanding advertisements is the ability to distinguish advertisements from other messages, and we suggest that young children’s ability to recognise advertisements on a Web page is far behind their ability to recognise advertisements on television.

• We summarise children’s understanding of advertisements. • Many advertisements aimed at children are for food and drink. • Children can identify TV advertisements by 6 years of age. • New research shows children cannot identify Web advertisements until much later. • Therefore children may be more vulnerable to Web marketing.