The Labour Party-led government in the UK is proceeding with plans to impose restrictions on the advertising of certain food & beverage categories in order to protect kids from exposure to unhealthy marketing.

A ban on running junk-food ads on TV before 9:00 p.m. (“pre-watershed”) will go into effect starting on October 1, 2025. And a total ban on paid-for online ads will also be implemented. 

Health Minister Andrew Gwynne made the announcement in parliament last week. “These restrictions will help protect children from being exposed to advertising of less healthy food and drinks, which evidence shows influences their dietary preferences from a young age,” he stated. As per government data from the 2022/2023 school year, 21.3% of four- to five-year-olds in England were overweight or living with obesity, and the figure was a much higher—36.6%— among 10- to 11-year-olds. 

But ITV CEO Carolyn McCall criticized the upcoming ban during this week’s Royal Television Society’s London Convention, noting that it may not be as effective as intended since adults make up the bulk of daytime audiences: “95% of adults watch ITV [and] 95% of kids are on YouTube,” she said, adding that the 16-to-25 demo also doesn’t engage with TV much anymore. “We’ve done loads of research to say this is not going to make a dent in obesity, but it is a political thing, and so we’re going to have to mitigate it in any way we can.”

McCall didn’t really quantify the potential financial impact on ITV in a meaningful way, saying the revenue loss would be somewhere in the range of “millions and millions” of pounds.

And she isn’t the only one sounding a warning. PACT told Kidscreen that “this decision could be really detrimental to UK broadcasters—as outlined already by ITV—with millions of points in potential losses. This will mean less money being put into programming, and [with] no evidence that it will actually make a difference to the UK obesity epidemic.”

The government will seek to provide further guidance on which products fall into the junk-food category, as well as noting any exemptions that will be made for products like baby formula and processed cereal-based foods for infants.

Previous restrictions on unhealthy food & beverage ads have shown promising results. The Transport for London’s ban in February 2019, for example, was linked to lower sales of such products, according to the NIHR.