Marks and Spencer under fire for champagne adverts

A series of advertisements for champagne that recently appeared on a pre-teen girl's gaming website caused one angry mother to complain to health group Alcohol Concern.

Industry website The Publican reports that the culprit in this matter seems to be a practice called retargeted advertising, which uses web cookies to mark computers that have previously visited company websites and targets them for further advertising on other sites. The mother in this case had apparently shopped for champagne at Marks and Spencer's website during the Christmas season, and this caused her computer to be retargeted.

Marks and Spencer have removed the offending advertisements. A spokesperson told the Guardian that the company was "taking measures to ensure that no retargeted adverts appear on children's websites in the future". The Guardian also reported that Alcohol Concern CEO Don Shenker urged companies to be responsible with their more controversial advertising.

Experts say that the increasingly convoluted nature of online advertising networks can cause this type of problem, and that webmasters should be particularly careful about the content that they allow to be displayed on their websites.