Asahi Caught Using Surveillance Ads to Push Beer Across Every Screen

Asahi’s latest digital marketing campaign – developed with adtech giant The Trade Desk – shows just how far Big Alcohol is willing to go to protect its profits. Under the guise of “omnichannel innovation,” Asahi is leveraging surveillance-based advertising to follow people across every screen they use, from streaming platforms to smartphones, and bombard them with personalized beer ads.

This is industrialized manipulation. The campaign uses The Trade Desk’s “Unified ID 2.0” to track and retarget consumers across platforms, building detailed behavioral profiles and delivering alcohol ads with precision. In ad industry speak, that’s “efficient.” In reality, it’s invasive, and directly at odds with public health.

Asahi’s goal is to eliminate “media waste” – in other words, to make sure no one can avoid their ads. That includes vulnerable groups and high-risk consumers who are already more exposed to alcohol marketing. The more targeted the ads, the more likely people are to consume more – and Asahi knows it.

This campaign also puts younger audiences at risk. Despite industry claims about responsible targeting, cross-platform tracking inevitably bleeds into youth-dominated platforms. The result: more young people exposed to beer ads, more often.

Promotion, or any marketing strategies, is Big Alcohol’s activity to drive alcohol availability and acceptability, to perpetuate the alcohol norm, and to place alcohol at the center of people’s thoughts and preferences, communities’ practices, and societies’ customs. The focus of this DUBIOUS FIVE strategy is the people and their beliefs about alcohol products, the public and their attitudes about and behavior around alcohol products, and the consumers and how much, how often they buy and consume alcohol brands.

Source:
https://www.thetradedesk.com/case-studies/unified-id-asahi-omnichannel-campaign

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