advantages of 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.[29] 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.”[30]

[edit] Advertising and constitutional rights

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Advertising is equated with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of opinion and speech.[31] Therefore criticizing advertising or any attempt to restrict or ban advertising is almost always considered to be an attack on fundamental rights (First Amendment in the USA) and meets the combined and concentrated resistance of the business and especially the advertising community. “Currently or in the near future, any number of cases are and will be working their way through the court system that would seek to prohibit any government regulation of … commercial speech (e. g. advertising or food labelling) on the grounds that such

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regulation would violate citizens’ and corporations’ First Amendment rights to free speech or free press.”[32] An example for this debate is advertising for tobacco or alcohol but also advertising by mail or fliers (clogged mail boxes), advertising on the phone, in the internet and advertising for children. Various legal restrictions concerning spamming, advertising on mobile phones, addressing children, tobacco, alcohol have been introduced by the US, the EU and various other countries. Not only the business community resists restrictions of advertising. Advertising as a means of free expression has firmly established itself in western society. McChesney argues,

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that the government deserves constant vigilance when it comes to such regulations, but that it is certainly not “the only antidemocratic force in our society. …corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times” and “markets are not value-free or neutral; they not only tend to work to the advantage of those with the most money, but they also by their very nature emphasize profit over all else….Hence, today the debate is over whether advertising or food labelling, or campaign contributions are speech…if the rights to be protected by the First Amendment can only be effectively employed by a fraction of the citizenry, and their exercise of these rights gives them undue political power and undermines the ability of the balance of the citizenry to exercise the same rights and/or constitutional rights, then it is not necessarily legitimately protected by the First Amendment.” In addition, “those with the capacity to engage in free press are in a position to determine who can speak to the great mass of citizens and who cannot”.[33] Critics in turn argue, that advertising invades privacy which is a constitutional right. For, on the one hand, advertising physically invades privacy, on the other, it increasingly uses relevant, information-based communication with private data assembled without the knowledge or consent of consumers or target groups.

For Georg Franck at Vienna University of Technology advertising is part of what he calls “mental capitalism”,[34][35] taking up a term (mental) which has been used by groups concerned with the mental environment, such as Adbusters. Franck blends the “Economy of Attention” with Christopher Lasch’s culture of narcissm into the mental capitalism:[36] In his essay „Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse“, Sut Jhally writes: “20. century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it.[37]

[edit] The price of attention and hidden costs

Advertising has developed into a billion-dollar business on which many depend. In 2006 391 billion US dollars were spent worldwide for advertising. In Germany, for example, the advertising industry contributes 1.5% of the gross national income; the figures for other developed countries are similar.[citation needed] Thus, advertising and growth are directly and causally linked. As far as a growth based economy can be blamed for the harmful human lifestyle (affluent society) advertising has to be considered in this aspect concerning its negative impact, because its main purpose is to raise consumption. “The industry is accused of being one of the engines powering a convoluted economic mass production system which promotes consumption.”[38]

Attention and attentiveness have become a new commodity for which a market developed. “The amount of attention that is absorbed by the media and redistributed in the competition for quotas and reach is not identical with the amount of attention, that is available in society. The total amount circulating in society is made up of the attention exchanged among the people themselves and the attention given to media information. Only the latter is homogenised by quantitative measuring and only the latter takes on the character of an anonymous currency.”[34][35] According to Franck, any surface of presentation that can guarantee a certain degree of attentiveness works as magnet for attention, e. g. media which are actually meant for information and entertainment, culture and the arts, public space etc. It is this attraction which is sold to the advertising business. The German Advertising Association stated that in 2007 30.78 billion Euros were spent on advertising in Germany,[39] 26% in newspapers, 21% on television, 15% by mail and 15% in magazines. In 2002 there were 360.000 people employed in the advertising business. The internet revenues for advertising doubled to almost 1 billion Euros from 2006 to 2007, giving it the highest growth rates.

Spiegel-Online reported that in the USA in 2008 for the first time more money was spent for advertising on internet (105.3 billion US dollars) than on television (98.5 billion US dollars). The largest amount in 2008 was still spent in the print media (147 billion US dollars).[40] For that same year, Welt-Online reported that the US pharmaceutical industry spent almost double the amount on advertising (57.7 billion dollars) than it did on research (31.5 billion dollars). But Marc-André Gagnon und Joel Lexchin of York University, Toronto, estimate that the actual expenses for advertising are higher yet, because not all entries are recorded by the research institutions.[41] Not included are indirect advertising campaigns such as sales, rebates and price reductions. Few consumers are aware of the fact that they are the ones paying for every cent spent for public relations, advertisements, rebates, packaging etc. since they ordinarily get included in the price calculation.

[edit] Influencing and conditioning