FTC Commish Says $77m Enough to Target Kids Online

The Wall Street Journal today has an interview with Federal Trade Commissioner Jon Leibowitz regarding the agency’s investigation into marketing to kids. One question deals with digital advertising in particular, and exemplifies how marketers are integrating on multiple platforms to reach kids.

Here’s what Leibowitz had to say:
One of the surprises in the [recent FTC] report was the prevalence of integrated advertising campaigns. They’re sophisticated, they’re multi-platform, they’re cross-promotional. It’s very different than what you see on, say, “Mad Men,” and it’s a whole virtual ecosystem, so you can see an ad on TV, you buy the product, you go on the Internet, you enter a code, you collect points, you win a prize, the prize is a T-shirt, the T-shirt advertises the product. So we are seeing a fair amount of cross-promotional marketing. We only found $77 million in Internet advertising, but our guess it that it’s very efficient advertising, because it’s targeted.