Is advertising good or bad for society?

Alejandro Figueroa
af297616@ohio.edu

The advertising industry is one that the general public gets to experience almost every day without exception —i.e. Through social media, music streaming services, internet ads, etc… Yet, the conversation of what effects it has on society is seldom talked about, and it’s an important one.

Advertising in more contemporary times is evolving to efficiently target an audience with the goal to entice that individual to buy said product or service. For example, your internet searches are now widely recorded and used to tailor advertisements based on your interests Just this week actually, Comcast, the world's second-largest telecommunications company, launched new advertising capabilities designed to more narrowly target audiences by observing what a viewer watches and tailoring commercials based on those series or movies watched. The question to ask though, are these modern capabilities a detriment to society?

(Photo from US Campaign; History of advertising: No 149: Times Square)

From an economic viewpoint, advertising, of course, isn’t bad, it could potentially have the ability to inform and distribute knowledge of a product or service otherwise unknown to the viewer. In fact, without advertisements, a lot of things would be different, including how we get our information about products to how newspapers or radio receive advertising revenue. So, not all advertising is inherently “bad”, but not all advertising is created with the same intentions either.

A report from the Journal of Public  Policy and Marketing defines the criticism of advertising and its dangers when advertising “tries to move people on the basis of irrational motives (e,g, status, fashion, "sex appeal") and those that are manipulative, superficial, tawdry, or corrupt.”

This, of course, is a problem in it that certain manipulative engagements by advertisements may create the need for a product or service that the individual does not actually need and may even cause harm.

An excerpt in an academic report from The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising, says  “by playing with emotions, stereotyping and manipulating ideas of real-life situations, advertising has reduced us to the role of the ‘irrational consumer’.”

The solution seems to be simple, don’t target vulnerable people and play on their emotions. Instead, advertisements should present a product or service based out of quality along with a rational presentation.

The Federal Trade Communication says that by law "claims in advertisements must be truthful, cannot be deceptive or unfair, and must be evidence-based. For some specialized products or services, additional rules may apply.”

Many may argue that advertising targets those who are vulnerable to make irrational decisions to buy a product or service they do not need. Maybe advertisements have evolved to the point where we, the viewer, are too into to material goods that we need to have it. It is difficult to prove that advertising has a permanent psychological effect on viewers, according to the latter reports. Maybe not all is lost.

 In trying to preserve our values maybe we can find that advertising could be the very tool to bring back what many claims to be lost at present, values that define us rather than the idea that one will feel a certain way they bought material good they were manipulated into.