Advertising is an important part of our capitalist society, and whether we like it or not it’s unavoidable. It’s not practical to suggest that we have a choice to not use technology like smart phones or computers if we don’t want to be subjected to constant advertising. These two pieces of technology have become essential in today’s business and education world. Over advertising is bad for consumers because the companies who can afford the most advertisements control the market. There is no room for a small company to compete with a giant who can afford to expose its product anywhere in the world.  Being subjected to unwanted advertising is a universal truth in our country. We can’t escape advertising and it’s literally impossible to ignore because the effects advertising has on us takes place in the subconscious part of our mind. This issue becomes even worse when advertisements start to become targeted to individuals based on “cookies” on our devises, storing our personal data and internet habits in order to present us pop-up ads that are tailored to our interests. We are even subjected to advertisements when we are lead to believe we are not. A popular new form of entertainment is called “Branded Entertainment,” which basically is when an entire movie, game, or event completely revolved around a product, and only exist to endorse the product. The constant bombardment brought on the public by the advertising and business world in general is a real problem that needs to be addressed by our generation, considering older generations didn’t grow up with this problem. I will not only talk about the effects of the constant exposure of ads resonating in our subconscious but the actual ethics behind the messages advertisements usually convey. When I began this argument, I started arguing how advertising is a positive part of our lives, considering I am an advertising major myself. However, after a lot of research I have concluded that the negative effects of advertising out way the positive. We all have this misconception that advertising doesn’t work on us, which is obviously not true. Advertisers put a tremendous amount of money and time to properly utilize psychological techniques that resonate on the subconscious level of our brains, in order to entice you to take actions or buy products that you might not need or usually purchase. These businesses understand that it is the consumer’s subconscious mind that makes most of the decisions, I actually learned about this technic in one of my advertising classes, it’s done on purpose. The strategy works as followed, the ads we see are designed to form an association between our subconscious and the products or services presented. The subconscious is stimulated emotionally in an instant with the use of certain colors, words, images, and music. Subliminal advertising is a popular and effective strategy advertisers use to reach the subconscious threshold of our minds. The public is exposed to hundreds of thousands of subliminal messages each year without any idea of the effects subliminal messaging really has on us. Studies exploring subliminal messaging and our perception to them clearly show the effects these messages have on our decision-making process. In one study tackling the subject, two groups of students were given two different, but very similar pictures of trees. One group just saw a picture of the trees, not doctored whatsoever. The others group was given an image which contained the same trees, but was doctored to also contain an artfully concealed duck. After the groups studied their image, each group was asked to draw an original nature scene. The group who had received the picture of trees that contained the subliminal duck image drew by far more ducks and related imagery (such as other feathered birds and water) then the other group. Our mind makes associations without even consciously realizing that it’s happening. This is one of the corner stones of advertising.

In a second study that published in the Journal of Advertising, researchers conducted a similar experiment to the duck experiment. They gathered two groups of participants, and they showed the first group a normal advertisement for Marlboro Cigarettes and Chivas Regal Whiskey. They then showed the same advertisements to the second group, only this time they contained sexually subliminal messages. The Marlboro Cigarettes ad was just a cowboy riding through a rocky terrain on his horse, but subtly blended into the rocks was an image of a penis. For the whiskey ad, they had a designer skillfully yet subtly blend the image of the back of a naked woman into the bottle. The precipitants of the study were hooked up to monitoring equipment which measured each individuals stress and arousal levels via the electrical conductivity of the skin. Skin conductivity will react the most subtle subconscious arousal, this is the principal in which makes lie detector machines works. Each group looked at their ads for only 30 seconds. The result was that the arousal response of the group who saw the advertisements containing the subliminal sexual images was 20% higher than for the group who saw the advertisements without the subliminal messages. This statistic shows us how little control we have on our impulses. A subliminal message that nobody even thought they saw was seen by our subconscious and increases the arousal of the precipitants. 

With our society’s technology advancing faster than anyone can possibly keep up with, we see new mediums and opportunities for advertisers popping up every day.  This nuisance has become a real issue while marketing experts have estimated that the average person can see up to 10,000 advertisements daily. This exposer overload is being fueled by the internet considering our browsing habits are monitored in order to create pop up ads tailored to our interests and needs. It’s also impossible to turn off your computer and be free from this over exposure of ads. In major sporting events, every single piece of space is for sale to advertisers. It’s gotten to the point that the NFL requires 20 commercial breaks per game essentially making the football secondary to the advertisements. It doesn’t get better beyond just the commercials either. Every possession is sponsored by Papa Johns, every replay to brought to us by Bud Light, and every player is required to wear certain clothes or will face fines. However, the most controversial aspects of advertising involve child targeted advertising. Parents don’t feel comfortable with companies viewing their children as a demographic and manipulating their impressionable minds before they can make decisions for themselves.  Advertising at its core is a standard business practice that has actually been considered a natural occurrence and response for humans. But when the public is bombarded by more ads then we can comprehend laced with subliminal messages and manipulation, the true ethics of advertising are questioned. 

Being subjected to advertisements has become an inevitable part of our lives. Some people argue that the impressions left on our brains are not all bad. Obviously, promotion helps businesses raise awareness of their products and services, and vice versus it lets the public know where their needs can be met. However, most people today claim advertisements have become an annoying unwanted burden on the public. For instance, as stated above, advertisements leave a psychological impression that in most cases are negative. Sometimes, people cannot afford to buy things they see in ads, but the curiosity of advertised products compels them to go beyond their financial limit. This issues becomes much worse when we consider almost every piece of technology has the potential to be a medium for advertising. Everyone has a personal computer, phone tablet, and now even the new wave of revolutionary smart watches has become a medium for digital advertisements. Digital Marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to between 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements and brand exposures on a daily basis. Of course, most people won’t recall seeing 10,000 messages in a day. This is because, for our sanities sake, we’ve developed a mental screening process to ignore most advertising messages. Less than 100 of them make it past our “attention wall” each day. However, there is no telling how many of these ads leave an impression on our subconscious memory. Nobody can possibly control or manage the amount of advertisements they are subjected to each day. Therefore, advertisement agencies can’t argue that if a consumer doesn’t want to see an ad they should just turn off their TV or don’t go online. The public must rely on the ethics of advertising and marketing agencies, and unfortunately these agencies abuse this trust beyond the consumers control. 

The world of advertising has changed so much with the rise of the internet. The internet offers unlimited potential for virtual ad space to be sold. All the unlimited free content on the internet is paid for by advertisements, therefore it’s almost like we are exchanging our vulnerability for information. One of the most effective styles of internet advertising is the use of “cookies”. A “cookie” is the term given to describe any type of message that is given to a Web browser by a Web server.  The main purpose of a “cookie” is to remember and identify users to prepare customized Web pages or to save site login information for a specific user’s convenience. The main purpose and the creation of “cookies” is harmless; however, when advertisers come along the situation is not so innocent. “Cookies” that watch your online activity are called malicious or tracking cookies. These are strictly negative “cookies” to watch for, because they track you and your web browsing habits in order to build a profile of your personal interests. Once that profile contains enough vital information to paint a picture of what kind of person you are, your information can be sold to an advertising company who uses your profile to target you with interest specific advertisements. On the surface, this clever scheme may seem harmless and hardly worth fretting over. The worst thing most imagine is that corporations will use your profile to devise an annoying popup ad campaign targeted towards specific groups or individuals. I for one do not feel comfortable having may identity figured out by corporations to sell me things. Our privacy rights during the technological revolution we are experiencing has become a global issue of debate. It’s unsettling to contemplate how such intimate knowledge of our personal preferences and private activities might eventually be used to brand each of us as members of a group or demographic. 

Have you ever been watching a television event, and just felt the event only exist to sell advertisements? Every single piece of space and transition holds the possibility for a new advertisement. I’ve especially noticed the outrageous amount of advertising in NFL games. The game has turned into just a huge advertisement itself, even though the players only play for sixty minutes, the games can take up to four hours due to “TV timeouts”. Everything is sponsored from the red zone drive to the hats the players must wear on the sideline as part of their contracts. It’s hard to blame the NFL, considering the average price for a 30 second commercial goes for 500,000 dollars depending on the game. The demand to advertise is overwhelming and they would be leaving a lot of money on the table. However, from the viewer’s perspective the constant advertisements and sponsors makes the experience seem almost fake. Real sports fans go to the games and watch them on TV because it’s something they love so much that they take time and money out of their lives to enjoy the event, and the constant bombardment of advertisements takes the humanity and rawness out of the game. I remember hearing a while back that NFL players get fined for using any headphones in front of cameras that weren’t Bose, because Bose is the “Official headphone sponsor of the NFL.” It’s not just the annoying commercials you have to suffer through every five minutes or the fact that every possession on the field is sponsored, it’s the outrageous greed that inevitably comes along with it.

A huge issue in the advertising world lies in the ethics of advertising to children. Even the movies and TV shows kids are watching are becoming sponsored by companies trying to sell their products through the lens of a movie or TV show, this is called branded entertainment. Any show or movie where the main characters are also toys you can buy is an example of this, and it’s manipulative towards children. In the US, the average child watches an estimated 16,000 television commercials on an early basis. Children in the US are world's most exposed to consumers of child advertising; nevertheless, the effects of television on children is a concern for parents across the globe. Although the FTC has placed special emphasis on truth in advertising when applied to children, the laws still allows for a great deal of unethical behavior. Former FTC commissioner Roscoe B. Starek states that children are not likely to understand exaggerated statements or images, citing the example that children may believe a toy helicopter to come fully assembled when in fact assembly is required. This interpretation of the laws completely ignores the unethical difficulties the surround the idea that you can’t apply the same laws when advertising to adults and children. An example of this is companies building brand loyalty in children before they can even fully understand what a brand is, therefore encouraging children to develop negative self-images or getting children hooked on products that can impede social development. The best way to act ethically in this area is to advertise to parents who buy the products for their kids, not the kids directly.Parents even have issues with advertisements targeting their children for healthy products. Subway’s child advertising campaign with the slogan "Playtime: Powered by Veggies", is shown to be Subway's most prominent child marketing and advertising attempt ever. Subway spent $2.2m on child marketing in 2011, and increased their budget to $7m by 2012. The same year, fast food competitor McDonald's spent an estimated $42m on ads for its Happy Meals, obviously, an unhealthy choice for children. Regardless of the healthiness of Subway's offerings in contrast to McDonalds, Subway is still directly marketing to children, a strategy many parents consider challenging. Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, questions the very nature of child marketing. "There's no moral, ethical, or social justification for marketing any product to children," she says. "Advertising healthier foods to children is problematic. We want children to develop a healthy relationship to nutrition and to the foods that they consume. Advertising trains kids to choose foods based on celebrity, not based on what's on the package” (Linn 30-34). To many ethical issues come along with child targeted ad campaigns, even the positive ones have their unethical draw backs. Children are way too impressionable to be the victims of corporate advertising campaigns.Now it goes without saying that not all advertising in the world is evil. Advertising can be inspiring and entertaining without be hyper-manipulative and evil. But when it comes to advertising we often don’t know what we can believe or not believe. Companies regularly stretch the truth and lie to cut corners to sell a product. Recently, for example, Volkswagen ran a huge campaign about their “clean diesel” engines. Well it turns out they were purposely programming the microchips in their cars to trick emissions tests into thinking the cars were up to code, when in reality the cars were emitting up to ten times as many pollutants out on the roads. The core of advertising isn’t evil, at its core it’s a practical universal business practice essential for companies to grow. The way companies choose to advertise is the evil part. Advertising, oddly enough, can be looked at as a natural occurrence. The best defense of advertising I’ve ever heard used the analogy comparing advertising to an elk. The American Elk, which are pretty large adult males can weigh up to 800 pounds. To prepare for mating season in the fall, male elks grow a new set of antlers, which can weigh up to 40 pounds. The antlers main purposes are to fend off other males and show off to the females. The explanation to why this is important comes from seeing the situation from the “buyer’s” point of view. What female elks are looking for and really want in a mate are good genes. Unfortunately, genes are invisible, so they use the antlers as proxies. The same is true with humans. When we want to meet someone, we want them to have traits we can’t physically see like being caring, intelligent, and loyal. The main difference with humans is that we can sometimes buy our way to “bigger antlers.” So, we use our clothes and cars and watches to try to symbolize our values and worth. A Wall Street banker will wear a hand tailored Italian suit and a big Rolex to symbolize he’s smart, tough, and good with money. This happens when we’re shopping as well. When we are standing in the grocery store in front of a whole wall of laundry detergent, what matters most to us is something invisible, which detergent cleans our clothes the best. So, we use what we can see, the packaging, to make our decision. Advertising in this compacity is a necessity in our society, but the way it’s taken over our world is not right.

Being an advertising major myself, it was a struggle to learn about all the negative effects that comes with advertising. It’s an issue that advertisers abuse their power and responsibility when it’s their duty to be fair to the public, considering advertising is essential and ingrained into our society. Advertisers have the ability reach us and access our internet habits to bombard us with advertisements tailored to our interests. This invasion of privacy is unethical and unfair to consumers. It’s also an issue that the biggest companies that have the biggest advertising budgets will never go extinct. If you look around everyone is essential wearing the same thing and has the same technology. It makes it impossible for smaller companies who might have a better product to enter a market that’s already consumed by a giant company that will always have a foot in the door. These companies start this vicious cycle by spending a gross amount of money advertising to children and getting them hooked on certain brands before they have the awareness to make a decision by themselves. This issue is only getting worse with more kids getting more technology at such young ages. These kids who are given smart phones when they are nine or ten will never have a chance to break free from the subconscious effects advertising has on us. Even the entertainment industry has sacrificed its artistic values to make movies that fall under the umbrella of “Branded entertainment.” Movies like The Lego Movie are just a 2-hour advertisement target to kids disguised as a movie. The world of advertising is vicious cycle and people need to be educated and aware of what is really happening when they are watching or reading an advertisement. 
