Advertising

A Coca-Cola ad from the 1890s

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade its viewers, readers or listeners to

take some action. It usually includes the name of a product or service and how that product or
service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume
that particular brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.[

Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or

services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort
to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. Different types of media
can be used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as newspapers,
magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail. Advertising may be placed by an advertising
agency on behalf of a company or other organization.

Organizations that spend money on advertising promoting items other than a consumer product
or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental
agencies. Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service
announcement.

Money spent on advertising has declined in recent years. In 2007, spending on advertising was
estimated at more than $150 billion in the United States and $385 billion worldwide, [ and the
latter to exceed $450 billion by 2010.
Contents
 1 History
o 1.1 Public service advertising
 2 Types of advertising
o 2.1 Television
 2.1.1 Infomercials
o 2.2 Radio advertising
o 2.3 Print advertising
o 2.4 Online advertising
o 2.5 Billboard advertising
 2.5.1 Mobile billboard advertising
o 2.6 In-store advertising
o 2.7 Covert advertising
o 2.8 Celebrities
 3 Media and advertising approaches
 4 Criticism of advertising
o 4.1 Hyper-commercialism and the commercial tidal wave
o 4.2 Advertising and constitutional rights
o 4.3 The price of attention and hidden costs
o 4.4 Influencing and conditioning
o 4.5 Dependency of the media and corporate censorship
o 4.6 The commercialisation of culture and sports
o 4.7 Occupation and commercialisation of public space
o 4.8 Socio-cultural aspects: sexism, discrimination and stereotyping
o 4.9 Children and adolescents as target groups
o 4.10 Opposition and campaigns against advertising
o 4.11 Taxation as revenue and control
 5 Regulation
 6 Future
o 6.1 Global advertising
o 6.2 Trends
 7 Advertising research
 8 See also
 9 References
 10 Bibliography
o 10.1 General
o 10.2 Advertising critics
 11 External links
History

Edo period advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine called Kinseitan

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and
political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and
found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Wall or rock
painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form,
which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of
wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC. History
tells us that Out-of-home advertising and Billboards are the oldest forms of advertising.

As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable
to read, signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an image
associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle
or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts
and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts
for the convenience of the customers.

As education became an apparent need and reading, as well as printing, developed advertising
expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly
newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books
and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and
medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false
advertising and so-called "quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the
regulation of advertising content.
An 1895 advertisement for a weight gain product.

Public service advertising

The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to
inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as HIV/AIDS,
political ideology, energy conservation and deforestation.

Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and
motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest -
it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes." - Attributed to Howard
Gossage by David Ogilvy.

Public service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest advertising, cause

marketing, and social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use of sophisticated
advertising and marketing communications techniques (generally associated with commercial
enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest issues and initiatives.

In the United States, the granting of television and radio licenses by the FCC is contingent upon
the station broadcasting a certain amount of public service advertising. To meet these
requirements, many broadcast stations in America air the bulk of their required public service
announcements during the late night or early morning when the smallest percentage of viewers
are watching, leaving more day and prime time commercial slots available for high-paying
advertisers.

Public service advertising reached its height during World Wars I and II under the direction of
several governments.
Types of advertising

Paying people to hold signs is one of the oldest forms of advertising, as with this Human
directional pictured above

A bus with an advertisement for GAP in Singapore. Buses and other vehicles are popular
mediums for advertisers.

A DBAG Class 101 with UNICEF ads at Ingolstadt main railway station

Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include
wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio,
cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web
popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers,
sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"), in-flight advertisements on
seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens,
musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers,doors of
bathroom stalls,stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the
opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and
supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a
medium is advertising.
Television

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format,
as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV
events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most
prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot
during this game has reached US$3 million (as of 2009).

The majority of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the
product.

Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer
graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local
billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast [Link] controversially, virtual
billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life. Virtual product
placement is also possible.

Infomercials

An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The

word "infomercial" is a portmanteau of the words "information" and "commercial". The main
objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the
presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone
number or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their
features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.

Radio advertising

Radio advertising is a form of advertising via the medium of radio.

Radio advertisements are broadcasted as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna
and a thus to a receiving device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for
airing the commercials. While radio has the obvious limitation of being restricted to sound,
proponents of radio advertising often cite this as an advantage.

Print advertising

Print advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or

trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership base, such
as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local
newspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics. A form of print advertising is classified
advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly
targeted ad for a low fee advertising a product or service.
Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the
expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online
advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, in text
ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising
networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Billboard advertising

Billboards are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to passing
pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of
passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large
amounts of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office
buildings, and in stadiums.

Mobile billboard advertising

The RedEye newspaper advertised to its target market at North Avenue Beach with a sailboat
billboard on Lake Michigan.

Mobile billboards are truck- or blimp-mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be
dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes preselected by clients, or
they can be specially-equipped cargo trucks. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit,
and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for
example, continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements.

Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world,
including:

 Target advertising
 One-day, and long-term campaigns
 Conventions
  Sporting events
 Store openings and similar promotional events
 Big advertisements from smaller companies
 Others

In-store advertising

In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of a

product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout
counters, eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places
as shopping carts and in-store video displays.

Covert advertising

Covert advertising, also known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is embedded
in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other
of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise's character John
Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch
engraved with the Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where
main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them
"classics," because the film is set far in the future. I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase
futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the
vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result
contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for
Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond
films, most notably Casino Royale. In "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the main
transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front. Blade Runner includes some of the most
obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola billboard.

Celebrities

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain
recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often
advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear
clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns
such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products.

The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake by a
celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand. For example, following his
performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer
Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate
with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana.
Media and advertising approaches
Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as television, radio
and newspaper because of a shift toward consumer's usage of the Internet for news and music as
well as devices like digital video recorders (DVR's) such as TiVo.

Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising
space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the
website receives.

Digital signage is poised to become a major mass media because of its ability to reach larger
audiences for less money. Digital signage also offer the unique ability to see the target audience
where they are reached by the medium. Technology advances has also made it possible to control
the message on digital signage with much precision, enabling the messages to be relevant to the
target audience at any given time and location which in turn, gets more response from the
advertising. Digital signage is being successfully employed in supermarkets. Another successful
use of digital signage is in hospitality locations such as restaurants. and malls.

E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known
as "e-mail spam". Spam has been a problem for email users for many years. But more efficient
filters are now available making it relatively easy to control what email you get.

Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster
rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal
advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see propaganda).

Unpaid advertising (also called "publicity advertising"), can provide good exposure at minimal
cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat
of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, "Xerox" = "photocopier",
"Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly, "Hoover" = vacuum cleaner, "Nintendo" (often
used by those exposed to many video games) = video games, and "Band-Aid" = adhesive
bandage) — these can be seen as the pinnacle of any advertising campaign. However, some
companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object. Equating a brand with a
common noun also risks turning that brand into a genericized trademark - turning it into a
generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.

As the mobile phone became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable
content appeared on mobile phones in Finland, it was only a matter of time until mobile
advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile
advertising had reached $2.2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile
ads.

More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture
and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns. A particular
feature driving mobile ads is the 2D Barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web
addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web
content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.

A new form of advertising that is growing rapidly is social network advertising. It is online
advertising with a focus on social networking sites. This is a relatively immature market, but it
has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to take advantage of the demographic
information the user has provided to the social networking site. Friendertising is a more precise
advertising term in which people are able to direct advertisements toward others directly using
social network service.

From time to time, The CW Television Network airs short programming breaks called "Content
Wraps," to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break. The CW
pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero
II, CoverGirl, and recently Toyota.

Recently, there appeared a new promotion concept, "ARvertising", advertising on Augmented

Reality technology.

Criticism of advertising
While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs.
Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have
become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on
internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools,
which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. In addition, advertising frequently uses
psychological pressure (for example, appealing to feelings of inadequacy) on the intended
consumer, which may be harmful.

Hyper-commercialism and the commercial tidal wave

Criticism of advertising is closely linked with criticism of media and often interchangeable. They
can refer to its audio-visual aspects (e. g. cluttering of public spaces and airwaves),
environmental aspects (e. g. pollution, oversize packaging, increasing consumption), political
aspects (e. g. media dependency, free speech, censorship), financial aspects (costs),
ethical/moral/social aspects (e. g. sub-conscious influencing, invasion of privacy, increasing
consumption and waste, target groups, certain products, honesty) and, of course, a mix thereof.
Some aspects can be subdivided further and some can cover more than one category.

As advertising has become increasingly prevalent in modern Western societies, it is also

increasingly being criticized. A person can hardly move in the public sphere or use a medium
without being subject to advertising. Advertising occupies public space and more and more
invades the private sphere of people, many of which consider it a nuisance. “It is becoming
harder to escape from advertising and the media. … Public space is increasingly turning into a
gigantic billboard for products of all kind. The aesthetical and political consequences cannot yet
be foreseen.” Hanno Rauterberg in the German newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ calls advertising a new
kind of dictatorship that cannot be escaped.
Ad creep: "There are ads in schools, airport lounges, doctors offices, movie theaters, hospitals,
gas stations, elevators, convenience stores, on the Internet, on fruit, on ATMs, on garbage cans
and countless other places. There are ads on beach sand and restroom walls.” “One of the ironies
of advertising in our times is that as commercialism increases, it makes it that much more
difficult for any particular advertiser to succeed, hence pushing the advertiser to even greater
efforts.” Within a decade advertising in radios climbed to nearly 18 or 19 minutes per hour; on
prime-time television the standard until 1982 was no more than 9.5 minutes of advertising per
hour, today it’s between 14 and 17 minutes. With the introduction of the shorter 15-second-spot
the total amount of ads increased even more dramatically. Ads are not only placed in breaks but
e. g. also into baseball telecasts during the game itself. They flood the internet, a market growing
in leaps and bounds.

Other growing markets are ‘’product placements’’ in entertainment programming and in movies
where it has become standard practice and ‘’virtual advertising’’ where products get placed
retroactively into rerun shows. Product billboards are virtually inserted into Major League
Baseball broadcasts and in the same manner, virtual street banners or logos are projected on an
entry canopy or sidewalks, for example during the arrival of celebrities at the 2001 Grammy
Awards. Advertising precedes the showing of films at cinemas including lavish ‘film shorts’
produced by companies such as Microsoft or DaimlerChrysler. “The largest advertising agencies
have begun working aggressively to co-produce programming in conjunction with the largest
media firms” creating Infomercials resembling entertainment programming.

Opponents equate the growing amount of advertising with a “tidal wave” and restrictions with
“damming” the flood. Kalle Lasn, one of the most outspoken critics of advertising on the
international stage, considers advertising “the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants.
From the moment your radio alarm sounds in the morning to the wee hours of late-night TV
microjolts of commercial pollution flood into your brain at the rate of around 3,000 marketing
messages per day. Every day an estimated twelve billion display ads, 3 million radio
commercials and more than 200,000 television commercials are dumped into North America’s
collective unconscious”. In the course of his life the average American watches three years of
advertising on television.

More recent developments are video games incorporating products into their content, special
commercial patient channels in hospitals and public figures sporting temporary tattoos. A
method unrecognisable as advertising is so-called ‘’guerrilla marketing’’ which is spreading
‘buzz’ about a new product in target audiences. Cash-strapped U.S. cities do not shrink back
from offering police cars for advertising. A trend, especially in Germany, is companies buying
the names of sports stadiums. The Hamburg soccer Volkspark stadium first became the AOL
Arena and then the HSH Nordbank Arena. The Stuttgart Neckarstadion became the Mercedes-
Benz Arena, the Dortmund Westfalenstadion now is the Signal Iduna Park. The former
SkyDome in Toronto was renamed Rogers Centre. Other recent developments are, for example,
that whole subway stations in Berlin are redesigned into product halls and exclusively leased to a
company. Düsseldorf even has ‘multi-sensorial’ adventure transit stops equipped with
loudspeakers and systems that spread the smell of a detergent. Swatch used beamers to project
messages on the Berlin TV-tower and Victory column, which was fined because it was done
without a permit. The illegality was part of the scheme and added promotion.
It’s standard business management knowledge that advertising is a pillar, if not “the” pillar of the
growth-orientated free capitalist economy. “Advertising is part of the bone marrow of corporate
capitalism.” “Contemporary capitalism could not function and global production networks could
not exist as they do without advertising.”

For communication scientist and media economist Manfred Knoche at the University of
Salzburg, Austria, advertising isn’t just simply a ‘necessary evil’ but a ‘necessary elixir of life’
for the media business, the economy and capitalism as a whole. Advertising and mass media
economic interests create ideology. Knoche describes advertising for products and brands as ‘the
producer’s weapons in the competition for customers’ and trade advertising, e. g. by the
automotive industry, as a means to collectively represent their interests against other groups,
such as the train companies. In his view editorial articles and programmes in the media,
promoting consumption in general, provide a ‘cost free’ service to producers and sponsoring for
a ‘much used means of payment’ in advertising. Christopher Lasch argues that advertising leads
to an overall increase in consumption in society; "Advertising serves not so much to advertise
products as to promote consumption as a way of life."

Influencing and conditioning

Advertising for McDonald's on the Via di Propaganda, Rome, Italy

The most important element of advertising is not information but suggestion more or less making
use of associations, emotions (appeal to emotion) and drives dormant in the sub-conscience of
people, such as sex drive, herd instinct, of desires, such as happiness, health, fitness, appearance,
self-esteem, reputation, belonging, social status, identity, adventure, distraction, reward, of fears
(appeal to fear), such as illness, weaknesses, loneliness, need, uncertainty, security or of
prejudices, learned opinions and comforts. “All human needs, relationships, and fears – the
deepest recesses of the human psyche – become mere means for the expansion of the commodity
universe under the force of modern marketing. With the rise to prominence of modern marketing,
commercialism – the translation of human relations into commodity relations – although a
phenomenon intrinsic to capitalism, has expanded exponentially.” ’Cause-related marketing’ in
which advertisers link their product to some worthy social cause has boomed over the past
decade.
Advertising exploits the model role of celebrities or popular figures and makes deliberate use of
humour as well as of associations with colour, tunes, certain names and terms. Altogether, these
are factors of how one perceives himself and one’s self-worth. In his description of ‘mental
capitalism’ Franck says, “the promise of consumption making someone irresistible is the ideal
way of objects and symbols into a person’s subjective experience. Evidently, in a society in
which revenue of attention moves to the fore, consumption is drawn by one’s self-esteem. As a
result, consumption becomes ‘work’ on a person’s attraction. From the subjective point of view,
this ‘work’ opens fields of unexpected dimensions for advertising. Advertising takes on the role
of a life councillor in matters of attraction. (…) The cult around one’s own attraction is what
Christopher Lasch described as ‘Culture of Narcissism’.”

For advertising critics another serious problem is that “the long standing notion of separation
between advertising and editorial/creative sides of media is rapidly crumbling” and advertising is
increasingly hard to tell apart from news, information or entertainment. The boundaries between
advertising and programming are becoming blurred. According to the media firms all this
commercial involvement has no influence over actual media content, but, as McChesney puts it,
“this claim fails to pass even the most basic giggle test, it is so preposterous.”

Advertising draws “heavily on psychological theories about how to create subjects, enabling
advertising and marketing to take on a ‘more clearly psychological tinge’ (Miller and Rose,
1997, cited in Thrift, 1999, p. 67). Increasingly, the emphasis in advertising has switched from
providing ‘factual’ information to the symbolic connotations of commodities, since the crucial
cultural premise of advertising is that the material object being sold is never in itself enough.
Even those commodities providing for the most mundane necessities of daily life must be
imbued with symbolic qualities and culturally endowed meanings via the ‘magic system
(Williams, 1980) of advertising. In this way and by altering the context in which advertisements
appear, things ‘can be made to mean "just about anything"’ (McFall, 2002, p. 162) and the
‘same’ things can be endowed with different intended meanings for different individuals and
groups of people, thereby offering mass produced visions of individualism.”

Before advertising is done, market research institutions need to know and describe the target
group to exactly plan and implement the advertising campaign and to achieve the best possible
results. A whole array of sciences directly deal with advertising and marketing or is used to
improve its effects. Focus groups, psychologists and cultural anthropologists are ‘’’de rigueur’’’
in marketing research”. Vast amounts of data on persons and their shopping habits are collected,
accumulated, aggregated and analysed with the aid of credit cards, bonus cards, raffles and
internet surveying. With increasing accuracy this supplies a picture of behaviour, wishes and
weaknesses of certain sections of a population with which advertisement can be employed more
selectively and effectively. The efficiency of advertising is improved through advertising
research. Universities, of course supported by business and in co-operation with other disciplines
(s. above), mainly Psychiatry, Anthropology, Neurology and behavioural sciences, are constantly
in search for ever more refined, sophisticated, subtle and crafty methods to make advertising
more effective. “Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses medical
technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) -- not to heal, but to sell
products. Advertising and marketing firms have long used the insights and research methods of
psychology in order to sell products, of course. But today these practices are reaching epidemic
levels, and with a complicity on the part of the psychological profession that exceeds that of the
past. The result is an enormous advertising and marketing onslaught that comprises, arguably,
the largest single psychological project ever undertaken. Yet, this great undertaking remains
largely ignored by the American Psychological Association.” Robert McChesney calls it "the
greatest concerted attempt at psychological manipulation in all of human history."

Regulation
In the US many communities believe that many forms of outdoor advertising blight the public
realm. As long ago as the 1960s in the US there were attempts to ban billboard advertising in the
open countryside. Cities such as São Paulo have introduced an outright ban with London also
having specific legislation to control unlawful displays.

There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the
influence of advertising. Some examples are: the ban on television tobacco advertising imposed
in many countries, and the total ban of advertising to children under 12 imposed by the Swedish
government in 1991. Though that regulation continues in effect for broadcasts originating within
the country, it has been weakened by the European Court of Justice, which had found that
Sweden was obliged to accept foreign programming, including those from neighboring countries
or via satellite.

In Europe and elsewhere, there is a vigorous debate on whether (or how much) advertising to
children should be regulated. This debate was exacerbated by a report released by the Kaiser
Family Foundation in February 2004 which suggested fast food advertising that targets children
was an important factor in the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States.

In New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and many European countries, the advertising industry
operates a system of self-regulation. Advertisers, advertising agencies and the media agree on a
code of advertising standards that they attempt to uphold. The general aim of such codes is to
ensure that any advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'. Some self-regulatory
organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding
the standards or codes like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK.

In the UK most forms of outdoor advertising such as the display of billboards is regulated by the
UK Town and County Planning system. Currently the display of an advertisement without
consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2,500 per offence.
All of the major outdoor billboard companies in the UK have convictions of this nature.

Naturally, many advertisers view governmental regulation or even self-regulation as intrusion of

their freedom of speech or a necessary evil. Therefore, they employ a wide-variety of linguistic
devices to bypass regulatory laws (e.g. printing English words in bold and French translations in
fine print to deal with the Article 120 of the 1994 Toubon Law limiting the use of English in
French advertising). The advertisement of controversial products such as cigarettes and condoms
are subject to government regulation in many countries. For instance, the tobacco industry is
required by law in most countries to display warnings cautioning consumers about the health
hazards of their products. Linguistic variation is often used by advertisers as a creative device to
reduce the impact of such requirements.

Future
Global advertising

Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international,
multi-national, and global. For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business
objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while
speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximising
local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation. Born from the
evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different
approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing
local executions, and importing ideas that travel.

Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region. The
ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad that contributes to its success is how
economies of scale are maximised. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can
be imported by any other market. Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of
Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or
region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.

Advertising research
Advertising research is a specialized form of research that works to improve the effectiveness
and efficiency of advertising. It entails numerous forms of research which employ different
methodologies. Advertising research includes pre-testing (also known as copy testing) and post-
testing of ads and/or campaigns—pre-testing is done before an ad airs to gauge how well it will
perform and post-testing is done after an ad airs to determine the in-market impact of the ad or
campaign on the consumer. Continuous ad tracking and the Communicus System are competing
examples of post-testing advertising research types.