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Their findings could shape policies to manage potentially harmful ad themes.
The nature of online media makes consumers particularly susceptible to targeted advertising of unhealthy foods, say researchers. They argue that stronger interventions – such as enhanced ad monitoring – can help mitigate these negative effects.
“Our analysis shows that it is, in principle, feasible to use methods and infrastructures such as those developed by the Australian Ad Observatory to observe the ads shown to individuals on social media platforms, and make advertisers and the platforms themselves accountable for unlawful or harmful marketing practices,” wrote researchers in Health Promotion International.
They added: “As online media become ubiquitous and embed ever more sophisticated data analytics and generative artificial intelligence capabilities, such measures will increasingly be needed to enable public oversight of the commercial and digital determinants of health in online media.”
Therefore, the aim of this research is to inform policy development for managing the digital determinants of health – technology-related factors, such as social media, that can influence health outcomes.
Method for observing social media adsUsing the Australian Ad Observatory, researchers collected 1,703 ads for top-selling unhealthy food brands from 367 Australian participants. These ads, placed by 141 advertisers, were donated directly from participants’ social media feeds via a browser plugin.
For this study, researchers defined “unhealthy foods” according to the 2024 Australian proposal to limit unhealthy food marketing to children.
According to the proposal, “unhealthy foods” are “foods and beverages that are high in fat, salt and/or sugar and are not needed as part of a healthy diet, referred to as “discretionary foods” in the Australian Dietary Guidelines”.
Adult participants 18 years and over drawn from the Australian public were asked to donate ads directly from their own social media feeds as they browse.
Participants completed a demographic survey that included information such as age and gender, and a browser plugin was installed in each of their devices.
Data collected about the ads include ad text, image and/or video content, and the time range of the observation.
This enabled researchers to investigate the content and targeting of social media ads as they are served to individuals in their private feeds, not just as displayed on the brands’ public pages.
The results indicated that there were potential patterns of demographic targeting online, with bursts of unhealthy food advertising in individual browsing sessions and potentially harmful themes in marketing.
Targeted content and appealing themesResearchers observed that brands used youth-targeted content and sports, among other popular ad themes, to promote their products on social media.
Just 20 advertisers accounted for 80% of unhealthy food ads, with fast food brands making up half of all observed advertisements. Snack and confectionery brands comprised one-third, while soft drinks were featured in 11% of cases.
The results also showed that male participants aged 18–24 saw 16% of all unhealthy food ad observations, but only 5% of all ads.
Fast food comprised a very high proportion of the unhealthy food ads these young men saw (71%), compared with the 50% fast food ads seen by participants in the unhealthy food ads dataset overall.
This suggests that either unhealthy food advertisers (and particularly fast food advertisers) or the algorithms placing the ads are targeting male participants and young people, said researchers.
Additionally, sports themes were a recurring strategy, often engaging broad audiences, including young people.
Some ads focused on branding rather than showcasing unhealthy products directly. For example, a fast food company promoted “Friday night footy feast” deals linked to an upcoming football game, reinforcing brand association with sports culture.
In some cases, the framing of unhealthy food ads appeared to be directed at parents and carers.
For instance, a fast food ad showed a woman enjoying peace and quite while three children ate fast food in the backseat of a car.
Based on these findings, researchers are calling for ad restrictions to protect consumers against potentially harmful themes that can affect public health policy goals.
Striking a balance?“The policy implications of our findings are that a broad prohibition on all forms of unhealthy food advertising online is desirable to protect not only children but also young people and the broader community. Such a prohibition will go one step towards addressing the commercial and digital determinants of health caused by harmful industries’ use of online automated advertising,” said researchers.
They added that social media platforms themselves should also have a mandated legal responsibility to implement any prohibition and to help promote a healthy online environment by enabling the public monitoring of online advertising.
While researchers advocate for broad restrictions on unhealthy food ads online, regulatory action remains contentious. A 2024 Australian federal government proposal to curb unhealthy food marketing faced significant opposition from industry stakeholders. For instance, most F&B companies rejected measures such as banning unhealthy food sponsorships at community sports events and televised games.
Researchers also highlighted the challenge of monitoring online ads, which are fleeting and algorithm-driven, often visible only to specific users. They noted that while platforms provide ad libraries for transparency, these are often incomplete and difficult to access for a meaningful overview.
Additionally, the researchers acknowledged that this study had limitations.
For example, the findings likely underestimate the prevalence of unhealthy food advertising online targeted at young people due to the lower participation of young people in the sample and the researchers’ reliance on ads from the browser version of Facebook, rather than mobile apps and other platforms (such as TikTok) where young people are more active.
Future research should invite research participants to narrate their own experiences of why and how they see the ads they do and how they try to influence the ads they see, said researchers.
Source: Health Promotion International
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daae192
“Unhealthy food advertising on social media: policy lessons from the Australian Ad Observatory”
Authors: Tanita Northcott, Katherine Sievert et al.
