Although advertising has grown as time has passed, it is becoming less and less noticed, leading companies to use overly flashy ads to try to reel you into their site or business. How many times has an ad said that you have you been the one hundred thousandth visitor to a web page, or won a free IPad? Companies are trying to infiltrate consumers minds to force them to buy a product with alluring models and flat out lies to make their product seem better. However, advertising itself isn’t necessarily bad. It’s actually quite good for the economy; companies place ads with other companies, which leads to both of them making profit; one through direct payment and the other through gained customers. Some advertisements can also be helpful to consumers, such as those encouraging people to stop smoking or to give blood (Source A).
The primary function of advertising is bringing attention to companies from their prospective customers. This however has several different paths it can take, such as public service announcements or political campaigns, but most of which are companies wanting people to buy their product. Whether or not the information from an ad instantly relates to someone is irrelevant because they may have a need or want for the product in the future and already know how they can get it, which can even be true if they completely disregard the ad (Source E). A car dealership that advertises low prices might have no immediate effect on a child, but once they can drive they will already have an idea of where they could get a deal. Some, if not most companies would rather almost definitely get payed later than maybe get payed now, which is in a way similar to a stock market.
Through competitive advertising, companies make things that aren’t issues into much greater deals than they are, such as a persons teeth not being as white as they could be (Source D) or needing sleeves on a blanket. With advertisers shoving things to buy at us from every direction, we begin to think we need said product so we buy it. This is a toxic mindset, but it can’t be helped when being bombarded by infomercials explaining why we absolutely must buy their product and that we won’t live complete lives without it. This spawns several “one hit wonder” companies who all make profit on a similar product and spend all of said money on different things.