Facts About Marketing to Children

Advertising Expenditures Spiral

In 2001 US advertising expenditures topped $230 billion, more than doubling the $105.97 billion spent in 1980. (1)

Given that the 2000 Census reports 105 million households in America, this means that advertisers spend, an average of $2,190 per year to reach one household. (2)

Ad Industry Spends Billions to Target Kids

• Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, estimates that $13 billion a year is spent marketing to American children - by food and drink industries alone. Food advertising makes up about half of all advertising aimed at kids. (3)
• Channel One's twelve-minute in-classroom broadcast, featuring 2 minutes of commercials for every 10 minutes of news, is compulsory on 90% of the school days in 80% of the classrooms in 40% of U.S. middle and high schools. Companies pay up to $195,000 for a 30-second ad, knowing that they have a captive audience of 8 million students in 12,000 classrooms across the country. (4)

Little Big Spenders – Children and Teen Spending Skyrockets

• Children's spending has roughly doubled every ten years for the past three decades, and has tripled in the 1990's. Kids 4-12 spent $2.2 billion in 1968, and $4.2 billion in 1984. By 1994 the figure climbed to $17.1 billion, and by 2002 their spending exceeded $40 billion. Kids' direct buying power is expected to exceed $51.8 billion by 2006. (5)
• Older kids, 12-19, spent a record $155 billion of their own money in 2001, (6) up from $63 billion just four years earlier. (7)

Footnotes
(1) McCann-Erickson U.S. Advertising Volume Reports and Bob Coen's Insider's Report for December 2001 (www.mccann.com/insight/bobcoen.html. Accessed 5/8/02.)
(2) Ibid., and U.S. Census reports.
(3) Marion Nestle and Margo Wootan as quoted in "Spending on Marketing to Kids Up $5 Billion In Last Decade," The Food Institute Report, April 15, 2002.
(4) Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, "Channel One." www.commercialfree.org/channelone.html. Accessed 6/5/02.
(5) James McNeal, The Kids' Market: Myths and Realities, Ithaca: Paramount Market Publishing, Inc., 1999, and The U.S. Kids Market, a 2002 report from Packaged Facts available at MarketResearch.com.
(6) National Institute on Media and the Family "Children and Advertising Fact Sheet" 2002. www.mediaandthefamily.org/research/fact/childadv.shtml. Accessed 5/8/02
(7) Peter Zolo, "Talking to Teens," American Demographics, November 1995.