Introduction: Recent studies have separately examined the content and demographic reach of the advertising of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). No study to our knowledge has linked the two in investigating whether racial/ethnic groups are differentially exposed to the comparative messages conveyed in online ENDS advertisements.
Methods: 932 unique ENDS advertisements (6311 total), which were posted on 3435 websites between December, 2009 and October, 2015, were categorized as either comparative or non-comparative with respect to the traditional cigarette.