Food and beverage marketing directed at youth dropped by nearly 20% between 2006 and 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Friday.

The total spending for the 48 food and beverage companies included in the report on marketing to youths ages 2 to 17 was $1.79 billion in 2009, down from $2.09 billion in 2006, “a 19.5% drop in inflation-adjusted expenditures” over the 3 years, the report said.

In addition, the percentage of all food and beverage promotions directed to those from age 2 to 17—18.5%—was also down from the 21.6% in 2006, the agency said in its update to the 2008 report, “Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents.”

While those companies still spent nearly $1.8 billion trying to reach American youngsters, they’ve shifted their efforts to new forms of media, such as online, mobile, and viral marketing, the report found, spending roughly half of their money in these fields.

“Companies continue to use a wide variety of techniques to reach young people, and marketing campaigns are heavily integrated ... often using cross-promotions with popular movies or TV characters,” the report stated. “Those techniques are highly effective.”

Friday’s report updates the 2008 report requested by Congress amid concerns about the dramatic increase in childhood obesity. The FTC requested and subpoenaed a slew of marketing and nutritional information from the 48 companies to analyze for its report.

The agency noted only modest improvements between 2006 and 2009 in the consumption of specific food categories heavily marketed to youths, such as cereals, drinks, and fast-food kids’ meals. Compared with a decade ago, children have increased their eating of healthier foods and total intake of nutrients such as calcium, while reducing their intake of less nutritious foods and additives, such as carbonated soft drinks, sodium, and sugar.

“Industry self-regulation should continue its focus on improving the nutritional profile of the food marketed to children,” the report stated.

The FTC also examined food consumption data from outside sources to correlate youth diets with food companies’ marketing expenditures. It found:

  Teens’ breakfast cereal consumption remained flat compared with 2006, even with increased marketing directed at them.
  Children ages 2 to 11, on the other hand, ate slightly more cereal even as marketing targeting them dropped substantially between 2006 and 2008.
  Consistent with shifts in marketing policies, children and teens drank the most caloric and sugary drinks outside of the school setting.
  Fast food marketed to children and teens was lower in calories, sodium, sugar, and saturated fat in 2009 than in 2006.

“The commission believes that the food industry can - and should - make further progress in using its marketing ingenuity and product portfolio to address childhood obesity,” the reported stated in its conclusion.

But the entertainment industry still lags behind. With few exceptions, media companies have not limited licensing of children’s characters or ad placements during children’s programming to more nutritious foods.

The FTC applauded the work of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative—a voluntary group of self-regulators in the industry—for its work to improve the nutritional profile of foods they market to children. The agency called on more companies to join the effort.

Companies participating in the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative marketed more nutritious products than companies not in the program, the FTC found.

“The encouraging news is that we’re seeing promising signs that food companies are reformulating their products and marketing more nutritious foods to kids, especially among companies participating in industry self-regulatory efforts,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.

###

By David Pittman, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today