ArticleNPJ digital medicine2018
The effectiveness of public health advertisements to promote health: a randomized-controlled trial on 794,000 participants.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- An Evolutionary Approach to Binge Drinking Impression Formation: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between France and Peru.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorTrial
- Digital Educational Strategies to Implement Evidence-Based Care for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.Current atherosclerosis reports · 2026Review
- A quasi-experimental design study on myopia preventive intervention based on the MMHEM health promotion model.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Association between socioeconomic variables and carotid plaque in middle-aged adults: data from the Akershus Cardiac Examination (ACE) 1950 Study.Open heart · 2026Article
- Observational
- Psychological and socio-contextual factors influencing preventive healthcare decision-making: evidence from IT and ITES companies in three cities of India.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Health promotion campaigns using social media: association rules mining and co-occurrence network analysis of Twitter hashtags.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Can social media encourage diabetes self-screenings? A randomized controlled trial with Indonesian Facebook users.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
- How Digital Solutions Might Provide a World of New Opportunities for Holistic and Empathic Support of Patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa.Dermatology and therapy · 2024Article
- Incivility in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Discourse and Moral Foundations: Natural Language Processing Approach.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Exploring the influence of food labels and advertisements on eating habits of children: a cross-sectional study from Punjab, India.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Statin Prescription Patterns and Associations with Subclinical Inflammation.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Article
- Finding the facts in an infodemic: framing effective COVID-19 messages to connect people to authoritative content.BMJ global health · 2022Article
- Regulating Ruminative Web Browsing Based on the Counterbalance Modeling Approach.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2022Article
- Trojan Horse: An Analysis of Targeted Advertising to Reduce Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among YMSM.Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education · 2021Article
- Precision Public Health Campaign: Delivering Persuasive Messages to Relevant Segments Through Targeted Advertisements on Social Media.JMIR formative research · 2021Article
- Article
- Vaccine advertising: preach to the converted or to the unaware?NPJ digital medicine · 2021Article
- Association of State Policies Allowing Medical Cannabis for Opioid Use Disorder With Dispensary Marketing for This Indication.JAMA network open · 2020Article
- A Multisensory Multilevel Health Education Model for Diverse Communities.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As public health advertisements move online, it becomes possible to run inexpensive randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) thereof. Here we report the results of an online RCT to improve food choices and integrate exercise into daily activities of internet users. People searching for pre-specified terms were randomized to receive one of several professionally developed campaign advertisements or the "status quo" (ads that would otherwise have been served). For 1-month pre-intervention and post-intervention, their searches for health-promoting goods or services were recorded. Our results show that 48% of people who were exposed to the ads made future searches for weight loss information, compared with 32% of those in the control group-a 50% increase. The advertisements varied in efficacy. However, the effectiveness of the advertisements may be greatly improved by targeting individuals based on their lifestyle preferences and/or sociodemographic characteristics, which together explain 49% of the variation in response to the ads. These results demonstrate that online advertisements hold promise as a mechanism for changing population health behaviors. They also provide researchers powerful ways to measure and improve the effectiveness of online public health interventions. Finally, we show that corporations that use these sophisticated tools to promote unhealthy products can potentially be outbid and outmaneuvered.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.