Description

ADVERTISING

In the 21st century, with an intensely competitive consumer market,

advertisers increasingly used digital technology to call greater attention to

products. In 2009, for example, the world's first video advertisements to be

embedded in a print publication appeared in Entertainment Weekly

magazine. The thin battery-powered screen implanted in the page could

store up to 40 minutes of video via chip technology and automatically

began to play when the reader opened the page.

For an advertisement to be effective, its production and placement must be

based on a knowledge of the public and a skilled use of the media.

Advertising agencies serve to orchestrate complex campaigns whose

strategies of media use are based on research into consumer behavior and

demographic analysis of the market area. A strategy will combine creativity

in the production of the advertising messages with canny scheduling and

placement, so that the messages are seen by, and will have an effect on,

the people the advertiser most wants to address. Given a fixed budget,

advertisers face a basic choice: they can have their message seen or

heard by many people fewer times, or by fewer people many times. This

and other strategic decisions are made in light of tests of the effectiveness

of advertising campaigns.

There is no dispute over the power of advertising to inform consumers of

what products are available. In a free-market economy effective advertising

is essential to a company's survival, for unless consumers know about a

company's product they are unlikely to buy it. In criticism of advertising it

has been argued that the consumer must pay for the cost of advertising in

the form of higher prices for goods; against this point, it is argued that

advertising enables goods to be mass marketed, thereby bringing prices

down. It has been argued that the cost of major advertising campaigns is

such that few firms can afford them, thus helping these firms to dominate

the market; on the other hand, whereas smaller firms may not be able to

compete with larger ones at a national level, advertising at the local level or

online enables them to hold their own.

Finally, it has been argued that advertisers exercise an undue influence

over the regular contents of the media, they employ—the editorial stance of

a newspaper or the subject of a television show. In response, it has been

pointed out that such influence is counteracted, at least in the case of

financially strong media firms, by the advertiser's reliance on the media to

convey a message; any compromise of the integrity of a media firm might

result in a smaller audience for advertising.

Read the complete article about the history of advertising, then complete

the following items.

1 In a complete paragraph of approximately 7 to 10 sentences, write

an objective summary of the article. 

2 Based on what you have read, what can you infer about the relationship

between advertising and the price you pay for a product and/or

service?

 Please include a direct quote, using proper parenthetical citation,

from the article to support your inference.

Answer the question in 2 to 3 sentences.