This study examines how food marketers use advergames, custom‐built and branded online games, to promote food products to children and provides the nutritional content of the food products featured in the advergames. The results reveal that food marketers use advergames heavily, with candy and gum or food products high in sugar most frequently appearing in the analyzed games. Children are often invited to “play with” the foods integrated as active game components. Finally, despite the educational benefits of interactive games, fewer than 3% of the games analyzed in this study appear to educate children about nutritional and health issues.

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When people complain, government agencies often respond. When regulations are threatened, businesses often offer reassurances that the problems can be handled with a self‐regulation code. However, past analyses of the power of self‐regulation find that while companies' voluntary adherence to self‐defined guidelines may effect some change in the activities of some companies, the inherent limitations of self‐regulation in the United States may restrict its ability to actually halt or control the undesired practices of others. The recent response by major food manufacturers and marketers to criticism of online games is an example of this mix.

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