The Next Frontier in Tobacco Marketing

Tobacco companies are fighting declining global smoking rates and stricter advertising regulations by investing in new digital marketing tactics. It is well established that tobacco is being promoted on social media, but less is known about other emerging digital venues.

That’s where Vital Strategies’ Tobacco Enforcement and Reporting Movement (TERM) comes in. TERM is an AI-powered, human-expertise-driven digital media monitoring system built in response to the tobacco industry’s exploitation of digital platforms. TERM tracks tobacco marketing online using news and social media listening. It packages findings into actionable reports for governments, media, and tobacco control advocates. TERM currently operates in India, Indonesia and Mexico.

The latest report from TERM, The Next Frontier in Tobacco Marketing: The Metaverse, NFTs, Advergames and More, uncovers tobacco marketing tactics online, from advergaming to influencer promotions, to the metaverse. These unregulated spaces are dominated by younger audiences, with estimates that 51% of metaverse participants are age 13 or younger. The report offers early evidence into how these platforms are being exploited by tobacco companies and recommendations for how governments can prevent tobacco marketing from growing unchecked.

For the two weeks following the report’s release, from November 27-December 8, 2023, there were 15 media stories on the report in Indonesia with an earned media value of $47,496 and a reach of 166,361 people. In India, there were 203 media stories with an earned media value of $622,090 and reach of 10,458,997 people. Across all press mentions picked up over those two weeks, from over 10 countries, there was a total earned media value of $729,485 and a reach of 78,863,286 people.

The webpage with the report had over 2,300 page views from November to December 2023, with 2,000 unique visitors.

For promotion, our posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter were seen 6,700 times with 228 points of engagement. Our posts included a 3-minute explainer video about the report to visually illustrate some of the main points to viewers.

The report was featured at the Tenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) this February.