Media exposure helps influence social norms about alcohol through advertising, product placements, and stories in a wide range of sources, including movies, television, social media, and other forms of entertainment. Although alcohol sales and marketing are highly regulated, people are exposed to a wide variety of alcohol and liquor advertisements, especially in the United States. Whether these advertisements directly result in an increase in consumption has been the topic of many public policy debates and much alcohol and consumer research. Recent studies have used robust methodological designs in order to assess the effects of advertisements on alcohol consumption (Grenard et al. 2013; Koordeman et al. 2012). Although longitudinal studies have found that alcohol commercials particularly affected younger adolescents’ propensity to consume alcohol (Grenard et al. 2013), an experimental design randomly assigning college students to alcohol advertisements demonstrated no differences compared with the control group (Koordeman et al. 2012). It is likely that the effects of advertisement differ across age groups and races. The alcohol industry uses complex targeted marketing strategies that focus on African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians, among
