An advertisement has a tremendous effect on the mind of an individual. This, in some cases, can have long-lasting effects on the youth, society, economy and daily life.
The advertisements are meant to gain market for a product or to bring awareness to the public.
But, these can have positive and negative effects based on the content and the intent in them.
Positive Impact of advertisement on society
1. Information to the public
Advertisements help people gain information regarding new products, methods, concepts and government schemes meant for the public.
Without ads, we were often not aware of better and useful products and services available in the market.
When there are multiple products available, ads help in informed decision-making for product purchases.
2. Health support
Ads enable to bring health awareness and support to the people in a society. The governments go for television advertising and other mass media before taking up mass vaccination. This helps all the people of the nation get vaccinated in time.
Even proper hygiene methods can also be passed on to the people in pandemics and other emergencies.
3. Access to Job opportunities and business
One can have access to job vacancies by going through ads and classifieds. These classified have become a common means to search for jobs by youth and teenagers.
Similarly, governments and other companies call for tenders from interested business people to take up public projects.
4. Helps abide by the rules
Governments display ads to pay the tax on time and abide by the nation’s law. Many times public is not aware of the deadlines and may fail to file their taxes. By ads, governments can ensure that people pay taxes on time.
5. Sponsor the sport and other programs
Ads are the prime source of revenue for media channels. They sponsor the sport and other shows which run on the television.
Thus they entertain for free for the viewers.
6. Generate employment.
The ads are a major source of income for many big companies like Google, Yahoo, Newspapers, television channels, etc. Even many major sports events are sponsored through ads by big companies.
Since advertising involves huge revenue, it offers many career opportunities for enthusiasts.
This employment is in the form of journalism, content creation, anchoring and more.
On consumer buying behavior
1. Enhance mass purchases
Many ads are designed to enhance the sales of products by companies.
This mass purchasing would be beneficial to the seller. But, it would not be so for the customer or sometimes the environment.
This is because some products are designed to get sales without the actual need for it. In doing so, they contribute to a lot of plastic waste and harm to the environment.
2. Bring awareness
Not everyone in the world knows about new products or methods. These products can be beneficial for health, nutrition, education, etc. Ads bring awareness about them to the commoner and help gain benefit.
3. Entertainment
Most television channels provide entertainment for the audience free of charge. This is possible due to the advertisement revenue they get to run the channel.
Advertisements sponsor even sports events like football, boxing, cricket. If not for money through ads, there would not be so many competitions happening regularly.
5. Help stay updated
Advertisement display lifestyle and other life improvements. This way, they help the audience stay updated in life regarding technology and developments.
The negative impact of advertisements in our life
Ads are aimed to capture the minds of people who view them and pass information without asking for it. This information can be positive, negative, manipulative, political, and even misleading.
- Misuse of freedom of expression
- Mislead people in the wrong way
- Disregard for society and law
- Chances of scams and fraud
- Disturbs the valuable human thought.
- Misleading society
- Creating controversy
Misuse of freedom of expression
Just like media news outlets, ads sometimes misuse freedom of expression. They can hurt the sentiments of a few religions or communities. This has happened in many instances in the past and governments had to mitigate the controversy.
Mislead people and youth in the wrong way
Though some products are not good enough to perform as promised by ads, they are still promoted. This is done just with business in mind and not customer benefit.
Some companies run a long time advertisement for such useless products to make people get habituated to use them.
In doing so, they try to prevent the growth of other better brands.
Some of the ads are targeted towards students or children. This sometimes changes the behavior of children or students in their lifestyle, education and other areas.
Even they may take loans or borrow money to make the purchases of the items advertised.
Disregard for society and law
Some ads disregard law. For instance, some medicines are not to be displayed as ads by law.
But still, advertisements are put up by companies to enhance sales.
They are even ready to bear the court fine, which just negligible than the income the company gains through the product sale due to ad display.
Chances of scams and fraud
Some ads are purely fraudulent as they try to entice people into making purchases with false promises.
This can sometimes be related to employment, investment, etc. When the visitor connects with them, he gets cheated.
And since he is far away from the company’s local point, he gives up fighting.
Lack of the desired effect on public
How many times did you buy a product based on seeing its ad? Also, how many ads have you seen and have never purchased its product at least once in a lifetime?
Disturb the valuable human thought and mind
Not all people like to see ads all the time. Even there are hoardings with ads beside the roads which are distractible during driving.
So, ads disturb the human mind a lot. They occupy the mind and tend to create many unnecessary thoughts.
This can waste valuable energy and time in the mind.
In one way, they can be disturbing to a common lifestyle.
Hence many people develop ad blindness, i.e., they intentionally avoid seeing ads. For some people presence of ads on television and websites is irritating even.
Yet, the ads are the main source of income for those free television shows or websites. If these shows or websites are to remain free for use by visitors or audiences, then the display of ads is inevitable.
Creating controversy
Sometimes certain ads create controversy based on their content or the message given.
This can leads to riots, religious tussles and social unrest sometimes.
Effect on culture and language
The ads tend to bring some new words into the language of the audience. For example, many people use the word “xerox” for photocopy as it was the company to have brought the technique close to people.
Ads are also used to propagate religion, politics and harmful ideologies in public.
Impact of advertisement on the economy
Ads pay for free television shows.
Ads provide free shows like games (cricket, tennis, soccer) by sponsoring them. Ads also sponsor television shows and websites to make them free for visitors.
Ads pay to the players and athletes.
So many players make good money during their careers. This acts as a boost to perform better in games.
Ads are done to avail of tax benefits.
Ads are produced to get tax benefits from the government. So this way the companies are encouraged to make publicity of their products.
Ads can help raise the sale of the product at the new launch.
Ads can help new businesses succeed. Without ads, most new businesses fail to survive in the market.