A report released this month by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) reveals the extensive tracking and data-driven advertising practices used by alcohol, gambling, and unhealthy food companies to market harmful products to Australians, including children.
72 Million Data Points Collected on Children by Age 13
The report, titled “Data-driven marketing of harmful and addictive products,” uncovers that advertising technology companies collect more than 72 million data points on each child by their 13th birthday. This data enables companies to build detailed profiles for targeted advertising while children are online.
According to the research, social media platforms have tagged children and young people with advertising interests related to gambling, alcohol, and unhealthy foods, then targeted them with advertisements for these products.
Extensive Network of Companies Involved in Data-Driven Advertising
The FARE and VicHealth report identifies an extensive network of companies participating in data collection and targeted advertising of harmful products. Major alcohol retailers and corporations involved include Endeavour Group, which operates Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Liquorland, Vintage Cellars, Jimmy Brings, Pinnacle Drinks, and ALH Hotels with over 12,650 poker machines. Coles Group operates Liquorland and the Flybuys loyalty program, while Woolworths Group runs BWS and the Everyday Rewards loyalty program. Gambling companies identified in the report include Sportsbet and Bet365.
The report documents how digital platforms and social media companies facilitate targeted advertising, with Meta operating Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads as key channels for data-driven advertising. Google, YouTube, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, and Amazon are also identified as major platforms where harmful product advertising occurs through sophisticated data collection and targeting mechanisms.
Streaming and media services play a significant role in the data-driven advertising ecosystem. The report identifies Spotify as using listening data for emotion-based targeted advertising, while video streaming platforms including Netflix, Binge, Stan, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Foxtel Now, and Kayo Sports deliver targeted advertising during on-demand content. Free-to-air streaming services including 7Plus, 9Now, 10Play, and SBS On-Demand also feature in the advertising network. News Corp, which operates news.com.au and other media properties, and 9 Entertainment are documented as major media companies participating in data-driven advertising practices.
Delivery services such as Uber Eats and Jimmy Brings (owned by Endeavour Group) are identified as channels where people are targeted with advertisements for harmful products. The report also documents the involvement of data brokers and advertising technology companies, including Microsoft’s Xandr advertising platform, LiveRamp, Adobe, The Trade Desk, MediaMath, Amobee, and Yahoo!, which facilitate the buying and selling of audience data for targeted advertising. Westpac’s DataX analytics service is identified as providing transaction data used in alcohol marketing campaigns.
How Data-Driven Advertising Systems Track Australians
The report details how harmful product advertisers use sophisticated data collection methods to monitor Australians both online and offline. These targeted advertising systems gather intimate information including personal details, purchase histories from stores and loyalty programs, location and movement patterns through mobile devices, online behavior including searches and browsing, social media activity, and inferred data about moods, emotions, and mental health.
Almost 40,000 distinct alcohol advertisements are targeted through Facebook and Instagram each year, equating to 765 alcohol advertisements per week, according to the research.
Endeavour Group’s AI-Powered Marketing Engine
The $12 billion alcohol and gambling corporation Endeavour Group has developed an AI-powered engine for personalizing alcohol advertising through its Endeavour X Initiative, according to the report. This data-driven advertising system draws on extensive data collected through programs including 5.4 million Australians enrolled in the My Dan’s program and 4.2 million Australians in the Woolworths Everyday Rewards program.
The engine performs segmentation to identify and target people most likely to purchase alcoholic products, personalizing advertisement content, timing, and pricing based on purchase history, demographics, and marketing engagement data. Endeavour Group is also working on using geolocation data to send push promotions to people’s phones when they come within certain distances of their alcohol stores.
Woolworths and Coles Loyalty Scheme Data Collection
The report highlights how major retailers use loyalty schemes to enable extensive data-driven advertising. Woolworths Everyday Rewards collects purchase data including scanned transactions at BWS, which can be shared across the entire Endeavour Group of alcohol companies including Dan Murphy’s, Jimmy Brings, Pinnacle Drinks, and ALH Hotels. The data is used to understand people’s alcohol use and purchasing patterns.
Flybuys, operated by Coles Group and Wesfarmers, provides aggregated audience segments based on de-identified member data to advertisers, data brokers, and digital platforms including Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, Amobee, and MediaMath. It also provides partners with anonymized analysis and reporting services related to their use of Flybuys data for advertising.
People at Risk Targeted Most Heavily
Research cited in the FARE and VicHealth report found that people experiencing alcohol dependence or gambling problems are targeted most frequently with data-driven advertising for these products. The algorithmic marketing systems are designed to identify high-value consumers based on frequent or high-volume use patterns.
The report states that people experiencing problems with alcohol are more attentive to marketing cues, which leads to increased cravings. Similarly, Australians seeking or in treatment for gambling problems report that being targeted with online gambling advertisements increases their gambling problems.
In 2019, alcohol companies sold more than a third of all alcohol in Australia (36.1%) to just 5% of the Australian population who were drinking almost eight standard drinks per day.
Monash University and University of Queensland Research on Youth Profiling
Research conducted by Monash University and The University of Queensland, in collaboration with VicHealth, examined how Victorian children and young people aged 16-25 were profiled by Meta for targeted advertising. The citizen science study found that 194 advertisers uploaded data about participants to Meta, which then generated 787 advertising interests about these young people.
An average of 6.3 alcohol-related advertising interests were assigned to each participant (such as ‘alcohol’, ‘bars’, ‘beer’), including 41 alcohol-related advertising interests assigned to five participants under age 18. Two alcohol retailers uploaded data about a participant under 18 years old.
Of the 54 participants who were younger than 18, over half reported being targeted with alcohol advertisements on social media either regularly (17.2%) or sometimes (41.4%).
How the Targeted Advertising Process Works
The report explains that data-driven advertising of harmful products operates through several integrated steps. Companies including Meta, Google, and harmful product advertisers monitor online behavior using cookies, tracking pixels, and tags. They track purchases through loyalty schemes like Everyday Rewards and Flybuys, location through mobile devices, and activity across social media platforms, gaming platforms like Roblox, and streaming services like Spotify and Netflix.
Data brokers and digital platforms combine information from multiple sources into vast databases, creating comprehensive profiles by matching data across different devices and platforms using “data clean rooms.” Machine learning algorithms then analyze the data to identify patterns and preferences, creating custom audiences of existing customers and lookalike audiences of potential customers with similar characteristics. Algorithmic systems deliver personalized advertisements designed to appear at moments when individuals are most susceptible, with content tailored to their specific vulnerabilities and triggers.
How the Actors in this Sector Operate
Meta’s Extensive Data Collection for Targeted Advertising
According to the report, Meta tracks and combines data about people’s activity across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Threads on multiple devices including phones, tablets, computers, and internet-connected TVs. Meta also collects data from various third parties, such as advertisers and data brokers.
The data collected for targeted advertising includes content people create and share, types of content and ads people view or interact with, information about friends and followers, purchases and financial transactions including credit card information, location information including where people live and places they visit, and information from third parties about activity on and off Meta platforms.
Harmful product advertisers share information with Meta using tools like the Meta pixel, whether or not people have accounts on Meta platforms. The report notes that adtech companies and digital platforms, including Meta, are exploring facial coding technology that could enable them to detect and track people’s emotions based on their facial reactions to advertising and other content using smartphone cameras.
Leaked Meta documents revealed that Meta gathered psychological insights on almost two million children in Australia and New Zealand to sell targeted advertising, including monitoring children in real-time to identify when they felt ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘anxious’.
According to the report, Meta tracks and combines data about people’s activity across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Threads on multiple devices including phones, tablets, computers, and internet-connected TVs. Meta also collects data from various third parties, such as advertisers and data brokers.
The data collected for targeted advertising includes content people create and share, types of content and ads people view or interact with, information about friends and followers, purchases and financial transactions including credit card information, location information including where people live and places they visit, and information from third parties about activity on and off Meta platforms.
Harmful product advertisers share information with Meta using tools like the Meta pixel, whether or not people have accounts on Meta platforms. The report notes that adtech companies and digital platforms, including Meta, are exploring facial coding technology that could enable them to detect and track people’s emotions based on their facial reactions to advertising and other content using smartphone cameras.
Leaked Meta documents revealed that Meta gathered psychological insights on almost two million children in Australia and New Zealand to sell targeted advertising, including monitoring children in real-time to identify when they felt ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘anxious’.
Microsoft’s Gambling Audience Segments
In 2023, analysis by Reset Australia discovered 650,000 audience segments on Microsoft’s advertising platform Xandr. These included segments of frequent gamblers that advertisers could use for targeted advertising, such as “casino frequenters,” “people who have gambled in the last 7 days,” and “people who have gambled in the last 4 weeks.” The segments also included children, teenage girls, and teenage boys.
News Corp and Westpac Data Partnership for Targeted Advertising
The report reveals that in 2022, News Corp developed a marketing campaign for alcohol brand Moet & Chandon using AI to connect data from six million daily transactions from Westpac DataX, a data analytics service offered by Westpac. The campaign used geolocation data to track people’s visits to Dan Murphy’s and Vintage Cellars stores and matched this to data on people’s exposure to the alcohol advertising across News Corp’s media services, including news.com.au.
News Corp claimed that the campaign led to 19,000 clicks to shop the alcoholic products and a 37% increase in visits to Dan Murphy’s and Vintage Cellars stores. News Corp also claimed that it has collected data from 16 million people across its businesses, including Foxtel, REA, Binge, Kayo, and News Corp media sites.
Spotify’s Emotion-Based Targeted Advertising Strategy
The report highlights how Spotify uses listening data to enable emotion-based data-driven advertising. The streaming platform collects data about music and podcasts people listen to, using this information to infer emotional states and susceptibility to advertising at different moments.
Spotify’s marketing materials state that multi-device users stream for 2.5 hours per day, which means the platform is constantly learning about how people listen in real-time through what they call “streaming intelligence,” first-party contextual data that reveals moods, mindsets, habits, and tastes in the moment. Spotify pairs this first-party data with third-party research data to connect people’s listening behavior with their real-world behavior, enabling alcohol advertisers to reach people with targeted messages at moments they are most susceptible.
According to the report, Spotify’s internal research has indicated that people are particularly susceptible to alcohol advertising that evokes nostalgia. Through their audience segmentation and profiling insights, they identify who the listeners are that make up the highest proportion of people who drink different alcoholic products and provide insights on how to target these people with alcohol marketing to evoke nostalgia. The company’s research also indicates that the majority of people feel that nostalgia helps to improve their mood and to connect people. Therefore, it is in the moments that people are seeking out nostalgia through music or podcasts on Spotify, to provide a mood boost or a sense of connection, that Spotify targets them with ads for alcohol, knowing that they are most susceptible to alcohol ads in these moments.
Google and Amazon in Data-Driven Advertising Ecosystem
The report notes that Google operates as a major digital platform collecting user data through search engine activity, with harmful product advertisers able to track internet searches on Google, including searches for help or support with mental health, gambling, or alcohol support and treatment.
Amazon is identified as a platform where online browsing, products added to carts, and purchases are tracked for targeted advertising purposes. Amazon also operates streaming services including Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Kindle, where viewing and reading behaviors are monitored.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Concerns
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has reported that advertisers are increasingly collecting multiple data points about children younger than 18, including their gender, location, relationship status, interests, hobbies, moods, and mental health.
The ACCC raised concerns about digital platforms using clickwrap agreements and take-it-or-leave-it terms that limit people’s ability to make informed choices about their data. The ACCC noted that many digital platforms use these practices, which make it difficult for individuals to opt out of specific data collection or use practices.
The ACCC warned that audience segments can be used to target people experiencing vulnerability in potentially harmful ways, for example by identifying people who are experiencing gambling addiction in a ‘frequent gamblers’ segment and targeting them with gambling advertising.
CHOICE Research on Privacy Policies
Research by consumer advocacy organization CHOICE, cited in the report, found that privacy policies of leading apps and websites are an average of 4,000 words and many require university-level reading skills to understand.
Consumer Policy Research Centre on Privacy Management
The Consumer Policy Research Centre research cited in the report found that it would take 14 hours just to read the privacy policies of the sites and apps a person typically uses over a single day.
Reset Australia Research Findings
Research by Reset Australia, cited throughout the FARE and VicHealth report, has documented numerous concerning practices. In 2021, Reset Australia found that Facebook has tagged children as interested in smoking, gambling, or alcohol use for advertising purposes. Their research found alcohol advertisers would pay around $3 to reach a thousand children and young people profiled as interested in alcohol. Reset Australia also found that Facebook continued to harvest children’s data to fuel its marketing algorithm even after announcing restrictions. Analysis of Microsoft’s Xandr platform by Reset Australia revealed 650,000 Australian and international audience segments including frequent gamblers and children.
World Health Organization Research on Targeted Advertising
The World Health Organization research cited in the report found that in 2022, alcohol company Stella Artois identified three audience segments according to data on demographics, alcohol use, and assumed preferences to target their marketing: ‘Connoisseurs’ (up-market drinkers interested in alcohol quality and taste), ‘Headbangers’ (heavy drinkers interested in alcohol strength), and ‘Style-seekers’ (fashion-oriented, up-market drinkers).
Impact on Health and Wellbeing
The report documents significant health impacts from data-driven advertising of harmful products. For children and adolescents, exposure to alcohol and gambling marketing increases the likelihood that they will start to use alcohol and gambling products and go on to use alcohol and gambling products at high-risk levels later in life. Similarly, exposure to unhealthy food marketing leads children and adolescents to higher consumption of these products.
One Australian dies every 90 minutes and another is hospitalised every three and a half minutes because of alcohol, with alcohol use causally linked to over 200 disease and injury conditions. Contributing to significant social, health, and financial harm, gambling companies take $25 billion each year from Australians.
Australians seeking or in treatment for a gambling problem report that being targeted with online gambling advertisements increases their gambling problems. Similarly, people recovering from an alcohol use disorder report that alcohol marketing can trigger alcohol cravings and a desire to drink.
People seeking help with alcohol, such as attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or following support pages, have raised that they are targeted with an increased volume of alcohol advertisements online. The same phenomenon has also been observed for people searching for other health-related information, such as information about diabetes, cancer prevention, and depression support, who were later targeted with advertising for pharmaceuticals related to these health conditions.
Public Opinion on Data Collection
According to Alcohol Change Australia research cited in the report, 65% of Australians are concerned about social media platforms collecting their personal data that can be accessed by alcohol companies for marketing purposes. Three in four Australians (76%) feel that alcohol companies should not be allowed to collect their data online and use it to target them with alcohol marketing. When it comes to children, most Australians (84%) agree that digital platforms should not be allowed to collect children’s data for commercial purposes like marketing.
A FARE survey of 220 Australians seeking to reduce gambling, alcohol, and unhealthy foods found that over 90% of participants were concerned about the amount of marketing for these products online. The survey found that 83% indicated that seeing this marketing makes it harder for them to reduce these harmful products in their lives and that avoiding these ads online can be near impossible.
Recommended Measures to Minimize Harm
FARE and VicHealth outline several measures to address data-driven advertising of harmful products. To stem data collection, the report recommends requiring that companies receive active, informed, voluntary, and non-incentivized opt-in consent for the collection, use, and disclosure of information about people. When consent is provided for the collection and use of a person’s information for marketing purposes, companies must not collect, use, or share sensitive information about people. Companies should only collect, use, or disclose children’s information when in the child’s best interest.
To protect people from harmful targeted advertising, the report recommends that children must not be tracked, profiled, or targeted for commercial purposes. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child have recommended that this be prohibited, so that children’s rights can be upheld in the digital environment. As data-driven marketing of addictive products pose a heightened risk of harm, companies should not use personalised and targeted marketing for harmful and addictive products. To further reduce the risk of harm, companies should not expose people to advertising for harmful and addictive products online, unless the person opts-in to receive this through active, informed, and non-incentivized consent.
To increase transparency, the report recommends requiring clear and simple explanations about the kinds of information that companies are collecting, generating, and using about people, and how automated decision systems are used in the targeting of individuals with marketing content online. All online advertising for harmful and addictive products should be tagged as such to facilitate monitoring of this advertising content and relevant regulatory enforcement.
Digital Rights Watch Advocacy
The report notes that advocacy by digital rights organizations, including Digital Rights Watch, has called for better protections of people’s privacy in the digital environment. In 2024, Digital Rights Watch and public health organizations delivered an open letter to the Attorney General calling for bold privacy reform.
About the Report Authors and Funding
The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) is the leading not-for-profit organisation working towards an Australia free from alcohol harms. FARE approaches this through developing evidence-informed policy, enabling people-powered advocacy, and delivering health promotion programs. Working with local communities, values-aligned organisations, health professionals, and researchers across the country, FARE strives to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in Australia.
VicHealth (Victorian Health Promotion Foundation) is a pioneer in health promotion, the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. VicHealth’s primary focus is promoting good health and preventing chronic disease. VicHealth creates and funds world-class interventions, conducts vital research to advance Victoria’s population health, produces and supports public campaigns to promote a healthier Victoria, and provides transformational expertise and insights to government.
The report was funded by VicHealth and FARE, with support from an Australian Research Council Early Career Industry Fellowship (project number: IE230100647). Jackson Pearse is acknowledged for contributions in the drafting of the report.
Acknowledgment of Traditional Owners
FARE and VicHealth acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands and waters on which they operate throughout Australia. They pay their respects to Elders past and present, and recognise the continuing connection to country of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Call to Action
The report emphasizes that people’s wellbeing must be prioritized over the commercial profits derived from harmful data processing and data-driven advertising practices, so that everyone can safely engage in the online environment. With digital connection more important in everyday lives than ever, it is essential that online environments are safe and healthy spaces for everyone.
The full report, “Data-driven marketing of harmful and addictive products,” is available from FARE and VicHealth, providing detailed documentation of data collection practices, profiling methods, and recommendations for regulatory reform to protect Australians, particularly children and vulnerable populations, from harmful targeted advertising.
Source: Fare
Leave a Reply