Ofcom yesterday released interim data on its HFSS (junk food) advertising regulations. It’s data Ofcom have been sitting on for several months but had previously only released to industry insiders. That’s unfortunate — it took quite a bit of pressure for Ofcom to release this to the people who matter — the public. Ofcom still need to improve its transparency efforts. Too often what are otherwise documents that matter to the public (Byron review response, junk food advertising data) are kept locked away for no good reason.

Anyway, enough banging-on about procedure. The details concerning Ofcom’s advertising restrictions are here. Ofcom say:

The interim data reflects the partial introduction of the [junk food advertising] restrictions to date:

• The amount of HFSS advertising that children see has declined in line with Ofcom’s predicted forecasts;
• Television share of total core category advertising spend has fallen from 68% to 64% since 2005;
• The greatest decline in impacts has been in relation to children aged 4-9 years (down 27% since 2005) and down 57% in children’s airtime;
• Core category 4-15 year olds impacts on television fell by 20% between April and September 2005 and the corresponding period in 2007. This was driven by a 59% decline in impacts delivered during children’s airtime, most of which (53%) has taken place between 2006 and 2007, since the rules were introduced;
• Core category advertising on terrestrial children’s programming has fallen to negligible levels, and is declining markedly on dedicated children’s channels. The decline on dedicated children’s channels has been greater than the reduction required under Ofcom’s phased rules.
• Impacts on dedicated children’s channels fell by 49% from 2005 to 2007.
• Within that overall reduction, there has been an increase in 4-15 core category impacts in “adult” non-terrestrial airtime (up 26% since 2005), leading to an overall 2% increase in impacts delivered across all adult airtime. This reflects increased viewing of non-terrestrial ‘adult’ targeted channels by children.