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Objective: Exposure to advertisements cannot fully explain the associations between young children's dietary intake and the time they spend in front of the television. It is therefore of importance to study television content other than advertisements in this aspect. The present study aimed to examine the nature and extent of verbal and visual appearances of foods and beverages in children's television programmes on Icelandic public service television.Design: A total of 27 h of children's programmes (domestic and internationally produced) were watched. All verbal and visual appearances of foods and beverages were coded, as well as the context in which the foods/beverages were discussed or appeared.Setting: Children's programmes on Icelandic public service television.Subjects: Two food groups were of special interest for their importance from a public health perspective: high-calorie and low-nutrient (HCLN) foods and fruits and vegetables (F&V). The χ 2 test and logistic regression were performed to analyse if the occurrence of the two groups was associated with the context where foods/beverages appeared.Results: Of the 125 different programmes, a food or beverage appeared in 86 %. Of the total food appearances (n 599), HCLN foods accounted for 26 % and F&V for 23 %. HCLN foods were presented as desirable by appearing more frequently with child characters (P<0·01) than F&V.Conclusions: Public service television has the potential to improve the way food and eating is presented in children's programmes, as young childhood is a critical period for founding healthy habits for later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Importance: Single cigarettes, which are sold without warning labels and often evade taxes, can serve as a gateway for youth smoking. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gives the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products, including prohibiting the sale of single cigarettes. To enforce these regulations, the FDA conducted over 335,661 inspections between 2010 and September 30, 2014, and allocated over $115 million toward state inspections contracts.Objective: To examine differences in single cigarette violations across states and determine if likely correlates of single cigarette sales predict single cigarette violations at the state level.Design: Cross-sectional study of publicly available FDA warning letters from January 1 to July 31, 2014.Setting: All 50 states and the District of Columbia.Participants: Tobacco retailer inspections conducted by FDA (n = 33 543).Exposures For Observational Studies: State cigarette tax, youth smoking prevalence, poverty, and tobacco production.Main Outcomes and Measures: State proportion of FDA warning letters issued for single cigarette violations.Results: There are striking differences in the number of single cigarette violations found by state, with 38 states producing no warning letters for selling single cigarettes even as state policymakers developed legislation to address retailer sales of single cigarettes. The state proportion of warning letters issued for single cigarettes is not predicted by state cigarette tax, youth smoking, poverty, or tobacco production, P = .12.Conclusions and Relevance: Substantial, unexplained variation exists in violations of single cigarette sales among states. These data suggest the possibility of differences in implementation of FDA inspections and the need for stronger quality monitoring processes across states implementing FDA inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses outcomes of national public health advertising campaigns supported by Public Health England (PHE). Topics explored include the involvement of advertising agency Freuds in several British public health marketing campaigns, remarks from PHE marketing director Sheila Mitchell regarding the selection of corporate marketing agencies that would handle said campaigns, and the effectiveness of the Dry January campaign introduced by national charity Alcohol Concern.

Background Despite declines in overall US cigarette consumption, the menthol cigarette market share has increased in recent years. Advertising contributes to menthol initiation and use, but little has been done to characterise menthol cigarette advertising outside of the point of sale. Methods Two full-service advertising firms were used to develop a library of menthol cigarette advertisements (ads) over a 9-month period ( June 2012-February 2013) in the USA. The volume of ads, media channel (direct mail, print, online, email), estimated spend and households reached was summarised overall and by brand in 2013. Direct mail, email and print ads were coded for content and the target audience of print publications was examined. Results Over the study period, 205 menthol cigarette ads were identified with estimated expenditures exceeding US$31 million, with 70% spent on direct mail ads. Over 90% of ads promoted Camel, Marlboro and Newport menthol cigarettes. A majority (87%) of direct mail ads contained coupons or other incentives known to appeal to price-sensitive customers. Only two brands' print ads appeared during this period: Newport ads focused on themes of sociability and sexuality, and were placed in magazines targeting African-Americans and younger consumers; American Spirit print ads were placed in general interest magazines and predominantly stressed the 'natural' aspects of their brand. Discussion The tobacco industry continues to spend millions of dollars promoting menthol cigarettes through channels that preferentially target vulnerable subgroups, such as African-Americans and younger consumers. Public health campaigns to educate and combat the influence of menthol advertising are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The success of a clinical trial is often dependant on whether recruitment targets can be met in the required time frame. Despite an increase in research into the benefits of exercise in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), no trial has reported detailed data on effective recruitment strategies for large-scale randomised controlled trials. The main purpose of this report is to provide a detailed outline of recruitment strategies, rates and estimated costs in the Exercise Intervention for Multiple Sclerosis (ExIMS) trial to identify best practices for future trials involving multiple sclerosis (MS) patient recruitment.Methods: The ExIMS researchers recruited 120 PwMS to participate in a 12-week exercise intervention. Participants were randomly allocated to either exercise or usual-care control groups. Participants were sedentary, aged 18-65 years and had Expanded Disability Status Scale scores of 1.0-6.5. Recruitment strategies included attendance at MS outpatient clinics, consultant mail-out and trial awareness-raising activities.Results: A total of 120 participants were recruited over the course of 34 months. To achieve this target, 369 potentially eligible and interested participants were identified. A total of 60 % of participants were recruited via MS clinics, 29.2 % from consultant mail-outs and 10.8 % through trial awareness. The randomisation yields were 33.2 %, 31.0 % and 68.4 % for MS clinic, consultant mail-outs and trial awareness strategies, respectively. The main reason for ineligibility was being too active (69.2 %), whilst for eligible participants the most common reason for non-participation was the need to travel to the study site (15.8 %). Recruitment via consultant mail-out was the most cost-effective strategy, with MS clinics being the most time-consuming and most costly.Conclusions: To reach recruitment targets in a timely fashion, a variety of methods were employed. Although consultant mail-outs were the most cost-effective recruitment strategy, use of this method alone would not have allowed us to obtain the predetermined number of participants in the required time period, thus leading to costly extensions of the project or failure to reach the number of participants required for sufficient statistical power. Thus, a multifaceted approach to recruitment is recommended for future trials.Trial Registration: International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Registry number: ISRCTN41541516 ; date registered: 5 February 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a study conducted by the authors on the influence of obesity related outdoor advertising by neighborhood race and income. Topics discussed include income disparities in outdoor food advertising, increased density of unhealthy beverage advertising in low-income communities, promotion of healthier food choices by public services, and the impact of advertising on health promotion in neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representatives of several Internet service providers (ISPs) have expressed their wish to see a substantial change in the pricing policies of the Internet. In particular, they would like to see content providers (CPs) pay for use of the network, given the large amount of resources they use. This would be in clear violation of the "network neutrality" principle that had characterized the development of the wireline Internet. Our first goal in this article is to propose and study possible ways of implementing such payments and of regulating their amount. We introduce a model that includes the users' behavior, the utilities of the ISP and of the CPs, and, the monetary flow that involves the content users, the ISP and CP, and, in particular, the CP's revenues from advertisements. We consider various game models and study the resulting equilibria; they are all combinations of a noncooperative game (in which the ISPs and CPs determine how much they will charge the users) with a "cooperative" one on how the CP and the ISP share the payments. We include in our model a possible asymmetric weighting parameter (that varies between zero to one). We also study equilibria that arise when one of the CPs colludes with the ISP. We also study two dynamic game models as well as the convergence of prices to the equilibrium values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search neutrality debate questions the ranking methods of search engines. We analyze the issue when content providers offer content for free, but get revenues from advertising. We investigate the noncooperative game among competing content providers under different ranking policies. When the search engine is not involved with high-quality content providers, it should adopt neutral ranking, also maximizing user quality-of-experience. If the search engine controls high-quality content, favoring its ranking and adding advertisement yield a larger revenue. Though user perceived quality may not be impaired, the advertising revenues of the other content providers drastically decrease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between exposure to television (TV) food advertising and children's dietary habits has been well established in previous studies. However, the efficacy of restrictions on TV food advertising in the prevention of childhood obesity remains controversial. The South Korean government has recently enforced a regulation, termed the Special Act on Safety Management of Children's Dietary Life, which restricts TV advertising of energy-dense and nutrient-poor (EDNP) foods targeting children. This study aimed to determine the impact of this regulation by examining changes in the TV advertising practices of South Korean food companies since the scheduled enforcement date of January 2010. The total advertising budget, number of advertisement placements and gross rating points (GRPs) for advertisements on EDNP foods aired on the five representative TV channels in South Korea were compared and analyzed for the year before and after January 2010. After January 2010, the total adverting budget, number of advertisement placements and GRPs decreased during regulated hours. Even during non-regulated hours, a significant decline was noticed in the number of advertisement placements and GRPs. The total advertising budget for non-EDNP foods increased, whereas that for EDNP foods decreased at a higher rate in addition to a drop in its percentage share. These results suggest positive changes in TV advertising practices of food companies because of the regulation, thereby lowering children's exposure to TV advertising of EDNP foods and promoting a safer environment that may facilitate child health improvement in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and horizontal match information. Equilibrium is unique whenever advertising is necessary. The outcome is a separating equilibrium with quality unravelling. Lower-quality firms need to provide more information. For a given quality level, as a function of consumer visit costs, first quality information is disclosed, then price information and then horizontal product information are added to the advertising mix. Some suggestive evidence is provided from airline ads in newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now day advertising has craftily become an inescapable companion of modern life that we can't escape and avoid it, truly it's an intrinsic part of our daily lives. Advertising affects everyone's life and influences many purchasers. Consumer turns to advertising for its informativeness, as well as its entertainment value. In November 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and became a formal member of the free trade club. China's accession to the WTO came after the country had economic reforms and significant growth of Chinese economy. In the same period advertising start booming in China (early 1979); it has become dramatically an increasing important business, industry, and custom artefact in the country. A lot of researches have been made on advertising industry in the west and are one of everyday activity in the current market, but researches about Chinese advertising about tourism market has generally been limited to journal articles. The purpose of this research is to: Investigate how consumers read and understand advertising in China, mainly tourism advertising; To learn how Chinese consumers react to TV and print advertisements; Examine what role advertising playing in marketing and how it perused people of China - moreover which channel is most preferable to advertise tourism offers in Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effects of the global recession on advertising. It comments that advertising media buying, as a major source of funding for media systems, greatly influences which media forms struggle or even disappear, and which media forms thrive. It highlights the 3 interrelated implications resulting from the advertising revenue decline including the nature of digital advertising, the emphasis on advertising accountability and new versions of integrated marketing.

The article focuses on greenwashing which is a term that refers to advertisements and labels promising more environmental benefits than they deliver. It relates that the use of the term has escalated because companies strive for greener products and services according to TerraChoice Environmental Marketing Inc. According to the vice president Scott Case, greenwashing has resulted to public confusion which is considered harmful for consumers. It emphasizes that consumer and environmental groups such as Greenpeace have stepped in to keep an eye on corporate use of greenwashing. It also mentions the seven sins of greenwashing including hidden trade-off, irrelevance, no proof and vagueness. INSETS: The Seven Sins of Greenwashing;Making Sense of All Those Labels.

The financial crisis reduces the efficiency of advertising rather than its quantum. Many institutions fail to realize that reducing the quantity of advertisement will not save them from the financial crisis. When companies cut their marketing and advertising budgets, they reduce the exposure of goods and services to the consumers. This is the reason why they see their sales going down significantly. Companies should focus on introducing promotional campaigns and build a long term relationship with their consumers. Throughout the article, the author will present a few favourable solutions to get out of advertising crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs on consumers has become the focus of considerable debate. Given rising health care costs, the question whether DTC advertising and other forms of promotion increase the price of prescription drugs is particularly important. This study uses data on name brand drugs in five major therapy classes marketed in the United States during 2001–2005 to test the effect of DTC advertising and other promotional variables on the price elasticity of demand. The predictions of two competing theories on the economic effects of advertising are used as a basis for forming the hypotheses. The data indicate that, in general, there is not a significant relationship between DTC advertising and price elasticity in these five categories. Given the inverse relationship between elasticity of demand and price, the findings do not support the position that consumers pay higher prices as a result of DTC advertising in the pharmaceutical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine evolutionary theory concepts and multivariate persistence methodology to develop and test expectations about the adaptiveness of firm decisions and its implications for performance heterogeneity. We focus on the relatively reversible advertising decisions in an evolving product market, domains typically ignored by evolutionary research. We find that an adaptive decision routine helps an incumbent firm maintain its advantages and overcome the challenge posed by a major competitive entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One central determinant of global environmental change is the continued expansion of personal consumption levels. In order to more fully understand the relationship between consumption and environmental degradation, the determinants of consumption must first be identified. Prior research in this area has focused on economic factors, primarily personal disposable income and population demographic characteristics. The role of cultural factors, including advertising, has been actively mentioned in theoretical analyses of the driving forces of individual consumption. However, this has not been empirically tested. In this article, we conduct an analysis of the impact of advertising on consumption levels in the United States. We start with a theoretical discussion of the literature on advertising and consumption. Based on this literature, we establish three hypotheses regarding the relationship between advertising expenditure and personal consumption. These hypotheses are then tested using time series analysis over the time period 1900–2000. The results show that advertising significantly impacts overall consumption and that these effects vary by type of consumption. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analysis for further research into the driving forces of global environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) is legal in the US and New Zealand, but illegal in the rest of the world. Little or no research exists on the social welfare implications of DTCA.Aim: To quantify the total costs and benefits associated with both appropriate and inappropriate care due to DTCA, for the case of depression.Methods: A cost-benefit model was developed using parameter estimates from available survey, epidemiological and experimental data. The model estimates the total benefits and costs (year 2002 values) of new appropriate and inappropriate care stimulated by DTCA for depression. Uncertainty in model parameters is addressed with sensitivity analyses.Results: This study provides evidence that 94% of new antidepressant use due to DTCA is from non-depressed individuals. However, the average health benefit to each new depressed user is 63-fold greater than the cost per treatment, creating a positive overall social welfare effect; a net benefit of >72 million US dollars.Conclusion: This analysis suggests that DTCA may lead to antidepressant treatment in 15-fold as many non-depressed people as depressed people. However, the costs of treating non-depressed people may be vastly outweighed by the much larger benefit accruing to treated depressed individuals. The cost-benefit ratio can be improved through better targeting of advertisements and higher quality treatment of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The health care marketplace has changed substantially since the last assessment of demand for internal medicine physicians in 1996.Methods: We reviewed internal medicine employment advertisements published in 4 major medical journals between 1996 and 2004. The number of positions, specialty, and other practice characteristics (e.g., location) were collected from each advertisement.Results: Four thousand two hundred twenty-four advertisements posted 4,992 positions. Of these positions, jobs in the Northeast (31% of positions) or single specialty groups (36.8% of positions) were most common. The relative proportion of advertisements for nephrologists declined (P < .001), while the relative proportions of advertisements for critical care specialists (0.5% in 1996 to 1.7% in 2004, P = .004) and hospitalists (1.0% in 1996 to 12.1% in 2004, P < .001) increased. Advertisements for outpatient-based generalist positions (i.e., Primary Care and Internal Medicine) declined (-2.7% relative annual change, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] -4.1%, -1.2%) between 1996 and 2004, a decrease largely due to a substantial decline in advertisements noted between 1996 and 1998. However, over the entire time period, the combined proportion of advertisements for all generalists (hospitalists and outpatient-based generalists) did not change (0.5% relative annual change, 95% CI -0.8% to 2.0%).Conclusions: Since 1996, demand for the majority of medical subspecialties has remained constant while relative demand has decreased for primary care and increased for hospitalists and critical care. Increase in demand for generalist-trained hospitalists appears to have offset falling demand for outpatient generalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why should public relations (PR) not be evaluated for its economic value? Despite the point of its social or intangible values, the argument goes on and on in most management meetings where PR practitioners always face the challenges of justifying their worth - often in monetary terms. In an open dialogue with Grunig during his visit to Malaysia in 2004, this renowned PR guru also expressed the difficulty of quantifying the actual PR worth. It is best to qualify PR values by assessing its priceless relationships with the company's stakeholders. However, in our routine business life, especially at the middle management level, the above question seems unavoidable. In enhancing excellence for PR and communication management, Ehling (1992) placed the logic underlying the economic values of PR on the relationship between benefits and costs associated with the implementation of a PR programme. The above question and problem serve as the main objective of this article. In exploring the solutions for the quantification of PR values in Malaysia, economic education is taken as a remedy for the absence of knowledge and skills in making intelligent decisions in the marketplace (Baskin et al., 1997; Lattimor et al., 2004). In this research context, the researchers (a combination of a practitioner and an academician respectively) confined the scope to the experience of a selected public-listed company for its PR campaign implemented in 2004. Quantification was attempted by evaluating the assessment in print media exposures. All earned media coverage for that particular PR campaign was measured for the media type, space, position, and the corresponding advertising rate. Monetary value was assigned to every single piece of PR news in the way disbursements are made to paid media for advertising activities. The explication of this advertising-value-equivalent (AVE) method in quantifying economic values for PR news with regard to the selected campaign was made possible with specially designed computer software. The report generated from the said software showed that the cumulative AVE was able to explain the return on expenditure (ROE) in order to carry out the said campaign. The propagation of the above AVE can be one of the many solutions to evaluate the economic worth of PR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a study which examined employment trends in four industries in the business services sector in the U.S. from September 2000 to September 2001. Percentage of decline in the personnel supply services; Factors affecting employment in the computer and data-processing services; Components of miscellaneous business services; Problems confronting the advertising sector.

Provides information on a study which determined how an advertising levy and the corresponding advertising expenditure affect the price of competing products and hence the producer welfare of those products. Explanation of the two related goods case; Development of the n-good case model and its application to fluid milk advertising; Concluding comments.

Deals with the economic analysis of the distributional effects of generic advertising. General issues in measuring the effects of advertising on demand; Issues in measuring welfare effects.

Magat et al. (1986) have correctly pointed out that a high sales elasticity to advertising adds to the flatness of the advertiser's profit objective. Quite consistently, apparently, they deduce that when the goodwill elasticity is huge, as with the famous Lydia Pinkham's vegetable compound, the misidentification of the distribution of advertising dynamic effects should hardly hit the advertiser's performance. But building on their approach, we show here it is just in such cases that the misspecification of the lag pattern is likely to cause the most severe damages. As those losses appear small, we persist in believing that econometric sophistication of lag structures may not pay much. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact on forecast accuracy of aggregating the subjective forecasts of up to 13 individuals was examined for five forecast weighting methods -- equal weighting, two ex post methods that took advantage of prior information about the individuals' relative accuracy, and two ex ante methods based on objective and subjective assessments of relative accuracy. The individuals were executives, managers and sales personnel employed by Time, Inc., and the variable forecasted was the number of advertising pages sold annually by Time magazine over a 14-year period. The results show that both the average forecast error and the variance of the error decrease as additional individuals' forecasts are included in the aggregate. Only two to five individuals' forecasts must be included to achieve much of the total improvement available from combining all 13 forecasts. Three of the differential weighting methods produced more accurate forecasts than equal weighting, but the magnitude of the improvement was small. Implications for realistic forecasting situations are discussed, as are conditions under which the use of aggregates seems attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the climate of concern about high medical costs, the relationship between the trade and professional aspects of medical practice is receiving close scrutiny. In the United Kingdom there is talk of increasing privatisation of health services, and in the United States the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has attempted to define medicine as a trade for the purposes of commercial regulation. The Supreme Court recently upheld the FTC charge that the American Medical Association (AMA) has been in restraint of trade because of ethical strictures against advertising. The concept of profession, as it has been analyzed in sociological, legal, philosophical, and historical perspectives, reveals the importance of an ethic of service as well as technical expertise as defining characteristics of professions. It is suggested that the medical profession should pay more attention to its service ideal at this time when doctors are widely perceived to be technically preoccupied. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines the implications of advertising in the United States by focusing on the economies of scale in advertising issues. Causes of firm advertising; Estimation of sales elasticity for different types of advertising; Relationship between advertising and sales.

The article presents several marketing abstracts relative to advertising and promotion. They include "Survey Finds Cooled Economy has Little Effect on Sales Promotion," "Measuring the Impact of Real Estate Advertising," by Richard Hansen and Richard Scott, and "Studying the Advertising Media," from the July, 1970 issue of the journal "Supermarketing."