The Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) is increasing its use of the Internet to disseminate anti-drug messages to kids and parents while trimming its traditional advertising on broadcast television, the New York Times reported Sept. 28.

The PDFA's Time to Talk initiative, for example uses a website -- not TV ads -- to encourage parents to talk to their kids about alcohol and other drugs. The project includes a partnership with Yahoo to facilitate communication with and among the target audience.

Digital media now represents 10 percent of PDFA advertising, which could rise to 31 percent by 2010. The group also is looking into distributing ads via cellphones and video games. "The risk is not being useful to this generation of kids and parents,'' said PDFA president and CEO Steve Pasierb. "Even if we're on the 6 o'clock news with the greatest of spots, we've missed the target."

Pasierb said growing traffic on PDFA's own website helped convince the group to make the shift. "Parents need resources that you just can't give them in 30 seconds," said advertising executive Sydney Hunsdale, whose agency, Avenue A/Razorfish, does pro-bono work for PDFA. "And because a lot of parents don't want to admit to anyone their child is having trouble with drugs, the more private nature of the digital media makes a huge difference."

"Our spend[ing] is down, but our effective reach is up," Pasierb said. "I would rather be able to reach 100,000 parents well, the way they want to be reached, than reach 10 million with a generic message."