Alcohol Advertising in Magazines: Effects of Price, Demographics, and Audience Size

In 2003, the alcohol beverage industry spent more than $1.6 billion on advertising in measured media outlets, including $394 million on ads placed in magazines. Industry critics assert that some of these activities intentionally target adolescent audiences and thereby contribute importantly to social problems associated with underage alcohol consumption. Several recent studies attempt to demonstrate targeting of youth by evaluation of audience compositions for magazines and other media. Some of these studies claim that magazine audiences with more than 15% underage youth result in “overexposure” to alcohol ads, and critics allege that this exposure demonstrates targeting of underage youth. This paper examines annual count data for alcohol ads placed in 28 magazines in 2001-2003. Specifying a demand function for advertising space, Poisson and negative binomial regressions are estimated conditional on magazine characteristics and readership demographics, including the percent of youth in the audience. The explanatory variables also include real prices of standardized advertisements, a measure of audience size, and a control variable for “exposure” in the count data model (annual issues). The analysis fails to demonstrate that alcohol advertisers are targeting youth. Adult audience size and price are key variables affecting advertising placement decisions. Implications of the findings for regulation of alcohol advertising are examined.