These findings, however, must be interpreted with caution, as it is difficult to determine whether advertisements directly result in increased alcohol consumption. To begin with, a variety of marketing strategies including distribution, product development, pricing, and targeted marketing all may affect links between advertising and consumption (Alaniz and Wilkes 1998; Roberts et al. 2014). For example, Molloy (2015) found that after controlling for targeting, only moderate advertising effects are seen, despite the strong correlations between alcohol advertising and drinking among youth. It also is unclear which aspects of online social media advertisements are related to the observed correlations. Research shows that drinkers like advertising about alcohol more than nondrinkers do, respond neurologically to the advertising more intensively than nondrinkers do, and may recall the advertising more clearly (Snyder et al. 2006), making it harder to distinguish among the specific mechanisms behind the observed relationships. As a result, making causal statements about alcohol use and marketing is problematic because the temporal order between using alcohol and seeing advertisements is not frequently established (Snyder et al. 2006).
