Six leading digital platforms – Google, Meta, Pinterest, Snap, TikTok, and X – have joined forces with the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) beer, wine and spirits companies to further strengthen standards of responsibility for advertising on digital channels worldwide.
In New Zealand, IARD members Asahi, DB Breweries, Lion NZ and Pernod Ricard support this initiative, and the NZ Alcohol Beverages Council is also a member of IARD.
“This pioneering partnership aims to build confidence in age-assurance systems online and to help ensure alcohol advertising is directed only at adults who can legally purchase beer, wine and spirits”, said NZABC executive director Virginia Nicholls.
“Anyone underage should not consume alcohol, and we want to prevent the sales, marketing and advertising of age-restricted products to those underage.”
Since 2018, IARD has been working in partnership with digital platforms to enhance responsibility standards for alcohol-related marketing online in support of UN goals to reduce harmful drinking.
IARD members are on track to reach 95 percent compliance with Digital Guiding Principles by the end of this year. The five safeguards on brand channels include an age affirmation mechanism, transparency message, user-generated content policy, forward advice notice and responsible drinking message. Hundreds of thousands of influencers around the world can also now age-gate posts.
Other key outcomes were leading global marketing and advertising agencies signed up to the first-ever global standards for influencer marketing, and millions of advertisers can also age-gate online marketing on digital platforms.
As part of this public announcement, digital companies have shared transparency reports on current platform-specific policies and practices in place to ensure age. A global study by Nielsen (2021) using avatar technology found 0.82 percent of ads seen online are for alcohol.
“Fewer young people in NZ under 18 are drinking alcohol, and those who do are drinking less hazardously. However, more work needs to be done to continue to accelerate these changes.”
According to the NZ Youth 2000 survey an increasing proportion of secondary school students are choosing not to drink. The proportion of secondary students who have never drunk alcohol increased markedly from 26 percent in 2007 to 45 percent in 2019.
Over time, young people are drinking less often. In the total student population, young people who used alcohol in the past month fell between 2007 and 2019 from 49 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in 2019.
In NZ, the proportion of secondary students (13 to 18 years) who reported ever drinking alcohol decreased from 82 percent in 2001 to 55 percent in 2019, a 27-percentage-point reduction.
As technology evolves, IARD members and digital platforms are collectively committed to further strengthening safeguards by 2025 so all stakeholders can be confident that age-assurance methodologies on digital platforms are robust.
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