Despite promising declines in cigarette and smokeless tobacco use in the past decade, 17.6 % of young adults aged 18–24 are current tobacco users (Cornelius, Loretan, Wang, Jamal, & Homa, 2022). Young adulthood is a time of transition that provides many opportunities for the adoption and progression of tobacco use due to changes in environment, peer groups, and life stressors (Ling & Glantz, 2004). While first use of tobacco typically occurs in adolescence (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012), the transition from experimental smoking to regular smoking is often solidified during young adulthood (Bernat et al., 2012, Rath et al., 2012). Recent studies have also suggested that the initiation of tobacco products among never-using young adults is greater than adolescents (Perry, Perez, & Bluestein, 2018). Tobacco use among young adults is unique from other age groups in a number of ways. Among adults, those aged 18–24 have the highest rates of hookah use (Cornelius, Wang, Jamal, Loretan, & Neff, 2020), e-cigarette use (Cornelius et al., 2022), and polytobacco use (Cornelius et al., 2022). Compared to their older peers, young adults (i.e., those aged 18–29) (Arnett, Kloep, Hendry, & Tanner, 2011) are more attracted to flavored products, such as flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes (Delnevo, Giovenco, Ambrose, Corey, & Conway, 2014), and the availability of flavors of snus, hookah, and e-cigarettes contributes to an overall positive perception of these products as “fun” and “recreational” among young adults (Choi, Fabian, Mottey, Corbett, & Forster, 2012).

As regulation and prevention programs focused on children and adolescents have helped reduce tobacco initiation in the younger age groups, young adults remain vulnerable to the tobacco industry as the “youngest legal targets” for tobacco marketing (Ling & Glantz, 2002). The relationship between tobacco marketing and initiation of tobacco use among adolescents is well-documented, with sufficient evidence to demonstrate a causal, dose–response relationship between exposure to tobacco product marketing and cigarette smoking initiation (Lovato et al., 2011, Wellman et al., 2006). However, there is a relative dearth of evidence regarding the relationship between marketing and tobacco use specifically among young adults. Many studies are primarily cross-sectional in nature (Biener and Albers, 2004, Ling et al., 2009) and are thus unable to examine the temporal relationship between marketing exposure and use. Others examine advertising receptivity (typically defined as ownership of a promotional item or the ability to name a favorite tobacco ad) (Abdel Magid et al., 2019, Pierce et al., 2018) rather than direct measures of marketing exposure. A few recent longitudinal studies have provided preliminary evidence that exposure to tobacco marketing is associated with tobacco use initiation among young adults. Mantey et al. (Mantey, Clendennen, Pasch, Loukas, & Perry, 2019) found that self-reported exposure to smokeless tobacco marketing is associated with initiation of smokeless tobacco after 6-months (Mantey et al., 2019). Loukas et al. (Loukas et al., 2019) found that recall of retail store-based e-cigarette marketing was associated with higher odds of e-cigarette initiation among youth and young adults up to 2.5 years later (Loukas et al., 2019). Chen-Sankey et al. examined data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study (PATH) and found that young adults exposed to e-cigarette marketing at wave 2 were more likely to have experimented with e-cigarettes at wave 3 compared with those not exposed, yet the association did not remain significant among young adults not susceptible to e-cigarettes (Chen-Sankey et al., 2019). Recent trends suggest that initiation of cigarette and e-cigarette use occurs now occurs more often among young adults than among adolescents (Perry et al., 2018), thus, additional research on the relationship between marketing and tobacco use among young adults is warranted.

With the rise of social media, the landscape of pro-tobacco and e-cigarette messaging is no longer limited to industry-sponsored advertising. In recent years, user-generated content, especially about hookah, cigars, and e-cigarettes (Link, Cawkwell, Shelley, & Sherman, 2015), has been observed on a multitude of social networking sites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Much of the content is in the form of user videos (Hua, Yip, & Talbot, 2013) or imagery such as “vaping selfies,” (Cavazos-Rehg et al., 2014, Ritter, 2015) while websites like Reddit have multiple forums dedicated to the topics of e-cigarettes and vaping, where users share information about modifying e-cigarette devices and the best e-liquid flavors (Wang et al., 2015). The presence of user-generated pro-tobacco messages on social media is well-documented. Thus far, research has been limited to either small, descriptive studies (Bromberg et al., 2012, Wackowski et al., 2011), or studies that take a very broad approach examining overall trends rather than quantifying specific exposure (Myslín et al., 2013, Richardson et al., 2014). Few studies to date have directly examined the impact of online tobacco and e-cigarette marketing on use behaviors (Choi et al., 2020, Soneji et al., 2018), but research suggests that social media depictions of tobacco use predict future smoking tendency (Depue, Southwell, Betzner, & Walsh, 2015), and that adolescents who use tobacco and e-cigarettes are exposed to and engaged with tobacco-related social media more than their peers (Hébert et al., 2017).

Historically, measuring exposure to tobacco marketing has been limited due to an overreliance on recall, recognition, or proxy measures such as advertising receptivity. Common measures such as asking participants how frequently during the past 30 days they saw tobacco ads in various locations is subject to recall bias (Stone, Shiffman, & DeVries, 1999), while methods like the recollection of specific tobacco ads or ownership of branded material are more likely to be reflective of an individual’s choice to seek out tobacco related items or promotions than they are of advertising exposure itself (Heckman, Flyer, & Loughlin, 2008). Moreover, current methods of measuring exposure to advertising are inadequate for internet and social-media based-ads due to the targeted and personalized nature of online marketing (Guha, Cheng, & Francis, 2010). Targeted advertising dramatically changes the online experience of each individual, and it is extremely common, with 62 % of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 reporting that they noticed advertisements online that were directly related to sites that they had recently visited or things for which they had recently searched (Purcell, Brenner, & Rainie, 2012). Although some studies have attempted to summarize online tobacco and e-cigarette advertising by examining marketing expenditures and conducting broad internet searches to determine the general characteristics of ads (Richardson et al., 2014), this method will at best capture only those messages that are industry-sponsored rather than user-created (Freeman, 2012).

In order to overcome these limitations, we utilized ecological momentary assessment (EMA). EMA is a method that utilizes the repeated collection of real-time data on participants’ behavior and experience in their natural environment (Shiffman, Stone, & Hufford, 2008). This method is unique because it accounts for environmental characteristics of the measurement, and because it avoids the retrospective distortion of data (Stone et al., 1999). EMA has been used in behavioral science for years, including in research examining the environmental and psychological antecedents of cigarette smoking (Shiffman, Gwaltney, & Balabanis, 2002) and smoking cessation attempts (Businelle, Ma, & Kendzor, 2014). Several studies have demonstrated the feasibility of EMA for capturing tobacco and alcohol marketing exposure and product use (Berg et al., 2019, Martino et al., 2012, Rose et al., 2017, Scharf et al., 2013). Exposure to pro-smoking media measured via EMA has shown to be associated with lapsing during quit attempts among adults (Kirchner et al., 2013), as well as higher mean levels of future smoking risk (i.e., susceptibility to tobacco use) among college students (Shadel et al., 2012, Shadel et al., 2013). Roberts, Keller-Hamilton, and Hinton (2019) examined the impact of tobacco marketing exposure among adolescents in a 10-day EMA study and found that recent tobacco marketing exposure was associated with recent tobacco use and increased likelihood of future tobacco use, and that youth who reported more exposure had more favorable attitudes towards the ads they saw (Roberts et al., 2019). This level of granular detail provides important insight into the mechanisms and outcomes of tobacco marketing, and is particularly useful in identifying potential targets for regulation and prevention. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between exposure to pro-tobacco and e-cigarette messages (both industry-sponsored and user-generated) and the use of tobacco products among young adults, as reported via EMA.