Alcohol companies have moved onto TikTok with influencer videos, celebrity campaigns and branded soap operas. The industry’s own self-regulation cleared the platform, relying on age checks that regulators say miss many children. In a US study, 99% of high school students saw alcohol content, much of it made by the alcohol industry and influencers.
Until mid-2024, TikTok did not allow alcohol ads in the United States. In 2020, about a third of its daily US users were 14 or younger, VinePair reported. Under the industry’s self-regulation codes, alcohol companies held back until TikTok could claim an old enough audience and limit brand pages by age. By early 2026, the industry considered both conditions met – although there are signs that the age checks miss many children. This year, the campaigns arrived.
When Malibu launched “Get Ready With Malibu Pink” this spring, it was Pernod Ricard‘s first major campaign designed specifically for TikTok, Fast Company reported. Creators including Sabrina Brier filmed “get ready with me” videos to launch a new flavoured rum. “It’s important for us to connect with Zillennials,” said Caroline Begley, Pernod Ricard’s vice president of marketing, referring to younger millennials and older Gen Z. Campari’s Espolòn tequila built a campaignaround “Short King Week” on comedian Ken Jeong’s own TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook channels, timed with Cinco de Mayo.
The Industry Approved Its Own Access
When TikTok opened to alcohol ads, it was the industry’s own rules that decided whether brands would actually use it for marketing. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the trade group whose board members include Pernod Ricard USA, Bacardi USA, Campari America and Suntory Global Spirits, keeps a list of platforms where its members may advertise under its self-regulation code. In May 2024, it added TikTok after the platform had “recently evaluated and measured their demographic”, its chief legal officer Courtney Armour told Marketing Brew. “So, we feel comfortable now giving them that green checkmark,” she said.
The figures on how many of its US users are over the legal purchase age of 21 were TikTok’s own, based on the ages people report themselves. The companies selling alcohol set the conditions for marketing it to TikTok’s audience.
Age Checks That Do Not Work
A study published in June asked 302 US high school students, several times a day over three three-week periods, about the alcohol content they came across. Nearly all of them – 99% – saw alcohol content. TikTok was the second most common source, after Instagram. On TikTok, 38% of the alcohol content they saw came from influencers and 9% directly from alcohol brands. The study counted content as coming from the industry only when it appeared as an ad or on a brand’s own account – influencer posts, paid or not, were counted separately. The more the students engaged with the content, even just by liking it, the more favourable their views of alcohol became.
The alcohol industry and TikTok present age checks as the answer. Armour told Fast Company that platforms have become “really good” at spotting people who give a false age, using what she called “signal data”, and TikTok markets itself to alcohol advertisers as “Built for compliance“.
TikTok’s age checks rest on estimates made from how people use the platform, not on ID. In July, the UK communications regulator Ofcom opened an investigation into those checks, stating that TikTok’s age inference models “failed to correctly identify a significant proportion of children”. The age checks the industry points to do not reliably keep children out.
A Lower Bar Outside the United States
TikTok’s alcohol advertising policy limits alcohol ads to people aged 25 and older in only a handful of countries, including the United States and Canada. In most countries where it allows them, including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines and South Africa, the limit is 18 – the legal purchase age, with no margin. In Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, alcohol brands “may fully sponsor or co-sponsor events”, and for the Philippines, TikTok lists “Surrogate Alcohol” among the ads that may be allowed.
In April, Heineken Brazil‘s Amstel launched a six-episode vertical soap opera on TikTok about young adults in São Paulo, with more than 40 million viewers expected.
Self-Regulation Does Not Protect Young People
Voluntary codes and age checks are the alcohol industry’s alternative to binding limits on marketing. The evidence shows they fail. A systematic review of self-regulated alcohol marketing found that breaches of the industry’s own content rules were highly prevalent and that exposure among young people was common, concluding that self-regulation fails even its own stated goal of protecting vulnerable groups, including young people. A 2023 article in BMJ Global Health foundTikTok’s guidelines insufficient to protect minors from alcohol promotion.
The exposure matters. A systematic review of 12 longitudinal studies linked greater exposure to alcohol marketing among young people with starting to use alcohol earlier and with heavy episodic use.
The alcohol industry judged TikTok safe for its own marketing, and that marketing now reaches the young people its codes claim to protect.
Sources:
You’re about to see a lot more alcohol on TikTok – and there’s a reason (Fast Company).
Jackson, K.M., Gabrielli, J., Colby, S.M., Wray, T.B., Rogers, M.L., Janssen, T., Corcoran, E., Nelapati, S., Clement, A., & Meisel, M. (2026). Characterizing in vivo exposure to alcohol content in the media: Media platform, engagement, and associations with attitudes. Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, 50(6).
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Embracing the non-traditional: alcohol advertising on TikTok (BMJ Global Health, 2023).
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