AAI strongly advocates that statutory regulation should be introduced whereby alcohol products cannot be advertised on an information society service unless all reasonable steps are taken to ensure that the advertising cannot be viewed by children. This is the same test used by the Department of Health in relation to the offence of selling tobacco products to under 16s.

‘Reasonable steps’ would effectively require the following:
• Age gates (at least user-entered date of birth or similar
• Use of any demographic targeting tools provided by advertising networks to limit viewing to users over 18
• Registration of websites with internet filtering software providers
• A restriction on ‘retweet’, ‘send by email’ and similar tools where these would have the effect of exposing an advertisement to a new audience which might include children