"advergames" news and stories

The fact that kids are bombarded with food advertisements every day hardly seems newsworthy. Nevertheless, ABC News recently ran a story about online food advertising and "advergames" that target children. The latter are online games designed to keep kids looking at advertising material for far longer than the timespan of a commercial. A study cited by ABC found that 85 percent of food brands that advertise to kids via television now have online advertising components. Cool-2B-Real (now Zip4Tweens, right) is a kid-oriented site from the National Cattleman's Beef Association. There you can play a game of hangman with answers like "Hamburgers" and "Steaks."