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Cognitive models of advertising defence assume that viewers respond rationally to advertising information. Yet, emotional
advertising was found to be most effective in a study of over 800 advertising campaigns (156), and emotions are processed
differently from cognition, driving rapid decision-making (157). Modern psychological models predict that, even without
conscious awareness, non-conscious (implicit) processing of advertising can influence beliefs and behaviour (154, 158),
again challenging a cognitive-based ad defence model. In digital media, where marketing is often less recognizable,
advertising may be processed implicitly even more often. On webpages, children could not consistently recognize simple
static advertisements, even at 10–12 years of age (159), and identifying marketing is likely to be still more difficult in social
media where the boundaries between marketing and other content are increasingly blurred. For example, in early 2015,
Facebook adjusted its “News feed” algorithm to favour marketing posts that are less overtly promotional (160); the rise in
the use of ad blockers means that less overt but still powerful forms of advertising are increasingly being used (161). Taken
together, these findings indicate that advertising operates effectively through emotional, unconscious routes and that this
may apply especially to digital media.
Of particular concern in this regard are adolescents, who have been largely excluded from discussions about food
marketing and to whom HFSS brands argue it is ethical to advertise (see e.g. Mars marketing code; 26). Adolescents are
developmentally, neurologically and socially likely to be susceptible to HFSS advertising (162): despite increasing cognitive
ability, they may be more impulsive, because of neurological and hormonal changes, and they are typically more subject
to peer influence, including regarding risky decision-making. In contrast to older adolescents and younger children, young
adolescents aged 12–14 years are more likely to heed the behaviour of adolescent peers and less likely to follow adults
regarding risky behaviour (163). In addition, adolescents typically have independent spending money and, in countries such
as Cyprus, Ireland and the United Kingdom, have been found to use “fast” and “junk” foods as an identity marker to set
them apart from adults (164–168).
Overall, therefore, suggestions that “advertising literacy” increases the resistance of older children to food advertising
are not supported (154, 155). Policy and industry self-regulation – focused on protecting young children from television
advertising that is consciously, cognitively processed – have been “eclipsed” by technological and commercial innovation in
digital marketing (99, p. 5), by recent understanding of the effects of emotional and unconsciously processed advertising
and by growing insight into the susceptibility of adolescents.
Research in digital food marketing to children:
challenges and solutions
The foregoing depicts a global digital media landscape in which children and food marketers are active, parents have little
awareness, and children receive little meaningful protection. Vast amounts of data on young people’s online activities
and offline locations are collected, stored and analysed to deliver targeted, often personalized marketing. Detailed bioneurosensory
measures are combined with data analytics to identify advertising with peak impact and consumers’
moments of peak vulnerability, and ads are developed to engage powerful emotions in order to encourage young people
to share them freely within their social networks. This scenario presents public health research and policy with challenges
on a scale previously not encountered by those whose concern is the health and well-being of children. In this section, we
outline the many research challenges facing the field, highlight areas in need of development and point to some potential
solutions.
Challenges in exploring children’s engagement with digital marketing
There are many challenges in this new, fast-changing domain. Information on children’s exposure to and engagement with
marketing in digital media is difficult to access. A literature review conducted on behalf of the United Kingdom Committee
of Advertising Practice (12) called for more sophisticated research to establish how many children visit particular websites,
for how long they engage with content, the extent to which adolescents are exposed to location-based targeting and
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