The Effects of Advertising

Advertising has long been the source of revenue for cable companies. Everywhere we turn there is some sort of advertisement. Even in our own homes brand names are being thrown at us from every direction. Advertising is a great way for manufacturers to get their products out there and to convince consumers that their product is superior to any other. Television ads, in the form of commercials, are a large chunk of the information we receive about various products. These days, however, many commercials are being completely skipped over.

DVR’s and VCR’s are just two of the reasons that television ads are being skipped over. The taping of shows allows viewers to skip over commercials completely. This, in turn, is spurring advertisers to come up with new forms of advertising. On demand ads, hyper-targeted ads, opt-in ads and embedded ads are just a few of the new technologies distributors are coming up with. There is the question of whether or not these new ad forms will be helpful or if they are just a waste of time. However, there is proof that advertising in the form of commercials is indeed effective.

Political ads were invented about a half a century ago. Research shows that due to political ads, campaign knowledge has indeed risen. This shows us that ads are not useless. Strong ads can shape decision making when it comes time to vote. Political ads can also increase democracy by informing voters about the real issues and increase consideration of their own beliefs as well as increase debates and discussions with other citizens. Information from political ads has also increased voter interest in other forms of media, in relation to politics, such as the internet, social networks, and the news. The influx of political ads can also play a large role in which citizens actually feel they have an influence in the final decision making process. Right now many individuals believe the socially elite are responsible for many political decisions, because they can easily obtain information due to their donations to the political candidates. With all of the fairly new political advertising, the average citizen is now able to be more involved and more informed on the issues.

Just this small amount of information about how political ads can effect citizens in such a large scale way proves to us that the new technologies being invented for advertising will be greatly useful as the viewings of regular commercials become more scarce. It will be beneficial for advertisers to have other ways to make citizens aware of their products than simply just having commercials between television show segments.


Cho, Jaeho. (2008) Political Ads and Citizen Communication. Communication Research, Vol. 35 Issue: 4, 423-451