Thursday, May 24th, 2012
Cigarette companies are now using the internet as a medium for product placement.
These companies have strongly denied product placement on the internet in the past. In fact, several cigarette companies signed a voluntary agreement to restrict direct advertising online by 2002.
However, a study published in the Tobacco Control journal discovered 20 professionally-made tobacco ads on YouTube. Some of the featured brands on the video hub are: Marlboro, L&M, Benson & Hedges, Winston and Mild Seven.
The researchers analyzed more than 160 clips on the first 20 search results pages of YouTube.
The breakdown of the clips was as follows: 40 each from Marlboro, Winston, and Benson & Hedges, 24 from Mild Seven and 19 from L&M.
The most often viewed videos came from Marlboro.
More than 70 percent of the clips contained images of people smoking branded cigarettes, and most featured brand content and brand name.
?The arguments used to limit tobacco imagery in film and TV appear to apply to internet videos,? said the authors of the study. ?Policy development by governments and/or the World Health Organisation is needed to encourage or require website operators to add pro-tobacco imagery or brand content to the material they will remove, to reduce youth exposure to such material.?
Source: TheIndependent
