Digital media allows companies to reach kids more directly than traditional media like television and magazines. It also cuts out parents as the voice-of-reason middlemen and adds more advertising possibilities -- some of which aren't obvious.
It's pretty easy to identify TV commercials and talk to your kids about them. But digital media has dramatically changed the landscape to include immersive websites, advergaming, viral marketing, mobile ads, social media marketing, and precise behavioral and location targeting, blurring the lines between advertising and entertainment for even the savviest media consumer. It's also made it more challenging for researchers to study advertising's impact on kids.
Media education -- teaching kids to think critically about advertising -- can help them see through persuasive techniques. Of course, you can't discuss every ad your kids see, but you can help them to be on the lookout for ads embedded in content, to learn how to analyze ads, and to think about how ads make them think and feel.