Advertising in America is big business, with people being inundated with ads, while watching TV, listening to the radio, on their Facebook page, popup ads on the internet, billboards, and so forth; it is thereby very difficult to lead a life where you are not seeing ad upon ad upon ad on a daily basis. You would think that with all this advertising surrounding us that people would readily admit that ads affect their buying decisions, their shopping decisions, and who they really are, but in fact, most people give off the impression that they hardly notice ads at all and that their influence upon them therefore is minimal. If this was really true would advertisers spend $167 billion dollars in the United States advertising as they are estimated to have done in 2013 by techcrunch.com?
The fact of the matter is that advertising influences people and their buying decisions, all of the time; of course, some people are influenced much more than others, and perhaps there are a few that are hardly influenced at all, but advertising is extremely effective in what it does, which is to influence your buying and your product appreciation. To the uninitiated, you might think that the point of advertising is something akin to Sgt. Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am," but that is virtually something that advertising never does. The way that products are pitched to consumers depends upon a lot of factors, but at its foundation is their desire to influence you, and to a certain extent, convince you that the idea of buying that particular product somehow originated with yourself.
The onslaught of ads directed against consumers has never been more insidious than it is at the present day, primarily because of the internet. The reason that the internet is a vehicle that appeals very strongly to advertisers is the fact that because you have identified yourself so conspicuously online through websites such as Facebook or Google, the ads thereby that you now see have a much more specific focus and purpose, because the advertiser has a real good understanding of who and what you are, which they are experts at exploiting.
Although, to the uninformed consumer, advertising may seem to be one of those irritating things, or possibly even enjoyed, to the advertisers it is absolutely serious business and they are very much result oriented. That is why, advertisers always want to know more and more information specifically about you, because the more that they know about you and what makes you tick, the more that they can take that information and model it to appeal to your specific temperament.
If advertising didn't work, there wouldn't be any advertising at all, there would instead be only little factual booklets about particular products, and everything would be boxed and displayed in the same drab and dull way. But, in fact, advertising works all too well, especially in getting people to believe that the product that they are buying and using, will make them better in some way, will fulfill them in some way, or make their life more joyful in some way, which sometimes might even be true. To the advertiser, while they are definitely delighted anytime that they gain a new product loyalist, the bottom line is that in doing so they want to remind you that the decision that you made was all yours, whereas, in reality, it was carefully and craftily constructed so that the choice you made, was the choice that they made for you, on behalf of you.