“The industry’s uniform standards are a significant advance and exactly the type of initiative the commission had in mind when we started pushing for self-regulation more than five years ago,” Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said in a statement about the advertising initiative.

The marketing standards announced on Thursday are part of an industry program called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which has participants like Campbell, Burger King, McDonald’s, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo and Kellogg.

“We tried to find a way that pushed the envelope, that made the standards stricter while also finding something that was realistic,” said Elaine D. Kolish, director of the industry initiative, which is operated by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The new standards are set to go into effect in January 2014, giving companies time to reformulate products to meet the criteria.

The standards would apply equally to all companies that participate. That would be an improvement over the current initiative, which was often criticized because it allowed each company to create its own nutritional standards for deciding which foods were healthful enough to advertise to children. Sugary cereals like Kellogg’s Apple Jacks made the cut, as did salty foods like ConAgra’s Chef Boyardee canned pastas.

In response to such inconsistencies, Congress asked the Federal Trade Commission to coordinate with several other agencies to recommend an objective set of criteria that could be held up as a voluntary standard for industry.

A preliminary version of the commission’s proposal was released in April, and it was more strict than the industry initiative. The commission proposed a single standard for all companies to follow, with rigid limits on less healthful ingredients and requirements that food advertised to children be heavy on nutritious ingredients like fresh fruit, whole grains and low-fat dairy products.