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Advertising on Children's Programs
Children are increasingly exposed to advertising from a wide range of sources, including billboards and point-of-purchase advertisements, product placements in movies and video games, pop-up ads on Internet sites, and both direct and indirect advertising in schools. For children under the age of 12, however, television is still their primary source of exposure to advertising. The average child sees more than 40,000 TV commercials each year, and television is still the main venue marketers use to target children under the age of 12.
Children's exposure to advertising on television does not occur only during children's programs. Research shows that even young children are typically exposed to a wide range of television programs (including situation comedies, news, and other adult-oriented programming that is coviewed with parents or is on while children are in the room doing other activities), and that the commercials shown during these programs are likely to attract children's attention even more than the programs themselves. With recent studies showing that more than half of American children have TV sets in their bedrooms (including more than 30% of children ages 2–7), children are also increasingly likely to view commercial messages without the benefit of adult guidance or regulation.
Nonetheless, TV commercials that are shown during programs specifically designed for children still provide the clearest picture of what advertising messages children see and how those messages affect their attitudes and behaviors. Potential for exposure to commercials during children's programs is, in fact, increasing with the proliferation of cable television stations devoted primarily or exclusively to child audiences (e.g., The Cartoon Network, The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon), nearly all of which include commercial messages. Furthermore, the trend is growing for product sponsorships featuring characters from children's TV programs (such as SpongeBob SquarePants or Rugrats) on product packaging, on clothing, and in children's meals at fast-food restaurants. This blending of program and advertising content is likely to make it even more difficult for young children to understand the persuasive intent of advertising.
Content of Advertising on Children's Television
Historically, advertising during children's TV programs refers to programs with a target audience under the age of 12 (primarily cartoons). There are four types of nonprogram messages shown during children's television programs: (1) product commercials; (2) public service announcements (PSAs) and drop-ins (educational messages developed by the network or station, such as Schoolhouse Rock or The More You Know); (3) station identifications and promos for upcoming shows on the same station; and (4) program-commercial separators (or bumpers) that typically say something like, “We'll be right back after these messages.” Nearly all of the research in this area has focused on product commercials and program-commercial separation; very little research has been done on children's understanding of PSAs and drop-ins, and almost none has been done on program promos.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Saturday-morning (children's) television was often called “a vast wasteland,” partly in reference to what was then perceived as a huge amount of advertising touting toys, junk food, and other unnecessary products to children. During that period, the length of product commercials dropped from an average of 60 seconds to 30 seconds, and by 1983 an hour of Saturday-morning TV contained an average of 14–15 product commercials (7–8 minutes), 5 promos (1–2 minutes), and 3–4 PSAs or drop-ins (2–3 minutes). This was actually a smaller amount of advertising than was found during most other time periods of the broadcast week; weekday daytime programs, for example, typically included about 16 minutes of nonprogram messages per hour, nearly all of which were product commercials.
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- Advertising
- Adult Mediation of Advertising Effects
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- Aggression, Advertising and
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- Peer Groups, Impact of Media on
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- Bedrooms, Media Use in
- Child-Centered vs. Media-Centered Perspectives
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- Cognitive Development, Media and
- Depression, Media Use and
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- Divided Attention, Parallel Processing and
- Electronic Media, Children's Use of
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- Gender, Media Use and
- Globalization, Media and
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- Indigenous Media
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- Media Effects
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- Violence and Aggression
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- Aggression, Television and
- Cartoons, Violence in
- Desensitization Effects
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- Fear Reactions
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- Hip Hop, Violence in
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