Ofcom to clamp down on children’s exposure to alcohol ads

Ofcom has asked the UK’s advertising regulators to review the rules that limit children from being exposed to alcohol advertising on TV, following research which shows that children saw an average of three alcohol adverts per week in 2011.

As a result of growing exposure to adverts showing alcohol, Ofcom has asked the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) to assess whether the limits placed on children’s exposure to such advertising on TV are effective.

Ofcom found that in 2011, a large quantity of children’s viewing was of programmes aimed at adult audiences, and since 2007, the amount of alcohol that children see in advertising has grown from an average of 2.7 ads per week to 3.2.

Ofcom has asked the ASA and BCAP to consider whether the current approach to identifying which programmes should exclude alcohol advertising is working properly, and whether the current approach is sufficiently comprehensive.

Recommendations from the ASA and BCAP will be set out this October. In the meantime, Ofcom has stated that it will undertake further research to re-examine children’s exposure to alcohol advertising, enabling them to review the impact of any steps taken to improve the effectiveness of regulations protecting children from alcohol advertising on TV.

“Ofcom has produced a fair-handed report which, while demonstrating a slight rise in alcohol ad exposure to children, acknowledges the rising trends which lead to greater exposure to all TV ads, indicating changing behaviours of children and their parents in general,” said Ian Twinn, ISBA’s director of public affairs.

“It is interesting that in the last decade the actual consumption of alcohol among underage drinkers has fallen,” added Twinn. “Clearly, the rules we have which mean that alcohol ads do not appeal as strongly to those very small number of children who happen to see them, are working.”