Advertisements are meant to grab people’s attentions.
It seems that fast food commercials featuring toy giveaways are doing what they’re supposed to, as they are prompting children to eat at fast food restaurants more frequently, according to a recent study conducted by researchers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, according to the publication University Herald.
For the study, researchers focused on Burger King and McDonald’s ads, according to TIME. The ads for these two major fast-food brands are reportedly featured on children’s networks, including Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
“Seventy-nine percent of the child-directed ads from those two restaurants aired on just four children's networks,” stated researcher Jennifer Emond.
Emond and her colleagues reportedly collected and analyzed data from 100 children between the ages of 3 and 7 and one parent for each child, according to The Daily Times Gazette. Parents reportedly completed a survey that included questions about how often their children watched each of the four children’s networks, if their children requested eating at the two restaurants, if their children collected the toys featured in the restaurants and how often the family visited these specific eateries.
37 percent of parents reported more frequent visits to the two fast food restaurants that had child-directed TV ads. 54 percent of the children reportedly requested visits to at least one of these fast food places.
Out of the 29 percent of children that collected toys from the restaurants, almost 83 percent reportedly requested to visit at least one of the restaurants.
Despite the results of the study, a 2013 report suggested that McDonald’s and Burger king have both reportedly scaled back their marketing towards children.
“For now, our best advice to parents is to switch their child to commercial-free TV programming to help avoid pestering for foods seen in commercials," Emond said.