Published: July 2013

ID #: 69293

Publisher: Public Health Advocacy Institute, Inc., Berkeley Media Studies Group, and Center for Digital Democracy

Authors: Wilking C, Gottlieb M, Bonacore M, Cheyne A, Meija P, Dorfman L, Chester J

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State consumer protection laws have yet to fully catch up with advances in digital marketing. This report focuses on how existing state consumer protection law can be used to limit harmful digital marketing to children and adolescents. The report describes the key differences between digital and traditional food marketing and discusses a variety of digital food marketing tactics used by the food and beverage industry, such as food packaging, mobile applications (“apps”), Facebook advertising, location-based tactics, incentive-based interactive marketing, and gaming. It also highlights the role states can play to address privacy concerns raised by digital marketing and provides a digital marketing legal profile of laws and regulations for 10 states that go beyond general prohibitions on unfair and deceptive trade practices that may be used to address digital food marketing techniques targeting children and adolescents.

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