Marketers Are Curbing Some Advertising to Children

These members embody Twinkies maker

Hostess Manufacturers Inc.,

which joined in April because it started to deal with the so-called millennial technology of shoppers of their 20s and 30s. Particularly, Hostess will likely be “extra aware” of the way it employs its anthropomorphized Twinkie the Child mascot transferring ahead, a spokeswoman mentioned.

And packaged-goods big

Unilever

PLC mentioned that starting subsequent yr it is not going to solely cease advertising and marketing meals and drinks to youngsters below 16, however it can cease utilizing influencers, celebrities and social-media stars who primarily enchantment to that age group.

Unilever, which is able to reallocate that advertising and marketing spend fairly than reduce it, mentioned it’s dedicated to touting its treats responsibly.

“Meaning we have to acknowledge the facility of social media and influencer advertising and marketing on youngsters’s selections—and handle it,” mentioned

Matt Shut,

Unilever’s president of ice cream.

Partly, entrepreneurs are responding to the proliferation of digital units, which give dad and mom and guardians much less management over the media and adverts their youngsters see than they’d within the days of conventional tv, mentioned

Bob Liodice,

chief government officer of the Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers.

“What you’re now beginning to see is entrepreneurs stepping as much as the plate and saying, ‘We all know we will’t management every little thing, however we’re going to do our easiest to go above and past to be accountable entrepreneurs’,” he mentioned. “If manufacturers don’t seem accountable, shoppers will stroll away.”

On the similar time, regulators together with the Federal Commerce Fee are taking a tough take a look at current guidelines on youngsters’s promoting within the period of influencer advertising and marketing and on-line focusing on by age.

However lengthy earlier than the age of digital immersion, promoting to youngsters was a topic of competition.

In 2004, a research concluded that promoting contributed to childhood weight problems, and legislators proposed regulating it. By 2006, 10 main entrepreneurs—

McDonald’s

,

PepsiCo

and Kraft Meals amongst them—had promised to tighten their voluntary restrictions on pitching to youngsters below 12 in a pledge that may grow to be the Kids’s Meals and Beverage Promoting Initiative.

Some shopper teams protested that the intiative didn’t go far sufficient—and say the identical now.

Josh Golin,

government director of the nonprofit Fairplay, which goals to eradicate advertising and marketing to youngsters, mentioned corporations can exploit loopholes in self-regulations which can be too lax to start with.

However current company bulletins point out a cultural shift away from youngsters’s promoting, pushed by dad and mom’ considerations on privateness and advert content material, Mr. Golin mentioned.

“Corporations are seeing a profit in positioning themselves as corporations that don’t market to children, or don’t market their most dangerous merchandise to children,” he mentioned.

The shift comes as adjustments in ad-sellers’ insurance policies are additionally making it tougher for manufacturers to focus on youngsters.

In mid-Could,

Walt Disney Co.

mentioned it is not going to be displaying preschoolers adverts on the approaching ad-supported model of its Disney+ service, regardless what content material they watch, or gather knowledge on particular person youngsters for focusing on functions.

Final yr,

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google mentioned it might cease providing ad-targeting companies based mostly on the age, gender or pursuits of customers below 18.

Fb

guardian Meta Platforms Inc. equally mentioned it might cease letting advertisers goal individuals below 18 on its platforms based mostly on their pursuits and their exercise on different websites.

Within the U.Ok., the regulating Promoting Requirements Authority has been laying down new guidelines on how and whether or not corporations in sure industries can goal youngsters with promoting.

For example, simply final week cosmetic-surgery adverts that focus on minors have been banned. In October, a prohibition on playing adverts that enchantment strongly to individuals below 18 will develop to ban these adverts from utilizing star athletes, influencers and different celebrities standard with youngsters. And adverts for meals and drinks deemed unhealthy will likely be banned on TV and streaming video earlier than 9 p.m., and on-line at any time, beginning in 2024.

Within the U.S., the FTC plans to analysis youngsters’s capability to differentiate between adverts and different content material, and the necessity for and effectiveness of disclosures to youngsters.

Nonetheless, advertisers would nonetheless want to set their very own insurance policies, in response to the Affiliation of Nationwide Advertisers’ Mr. Liodice. Entrepreneurs are higher attuned to what accountable promoting means right this moment than they have been previously, he mentioned.

“They’ve realized that better care should be taken with youngsters,” he mentioned.

Write to Katie Deighton at katie.deighton@wsj.com