Advertising Influence On Social Media

Today in modern society, advertising dominates social media and exists everywhere one can look. For example, in New York City, more specifically, Times Square, there are advertisements placed on every billboard and screen monitor. Even throughout the rest of New York City, there are a multitude of different forms of advertising, such as the posters on top of taxis or on the TV screens inside of them, or the posters pasted onto every bus stop and construction site wall. For the majority of these advertisements, marketers follow two simple assumptions. The first assumption is that Marketers assume they can control what consumers think about brands through marketing communications, especially advertising (Weilbacher, 2003). The second assumption

(Weilbacher, 2003). However, the key point is that advertising has essentially taken over social media and continues to maintain major influence and impact on society today.

A prime instance which exhibits how advertising has greatly impacted modern society, is the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl attracts one of the largest audience viewerships every year. This is of course largely due to the fact that it is the championship game for the NFL, but also because of its renowned reputation for airing the best commercials of the year. Some of the most well executed and popular advertisements ever created have aired during this event and as a result, social media explodes with audience responses. The advertisements themselves, even receive a post game show on particular channels to be ranked. Besides these advertisements exhibiting entertaining elements, they also incorporate a vital

According to (Watkins, Aitken, Robertson, Theyne, Williams, 2016), Children aged 3–15 years spend more time with television than other forms of media, and this is particularly true for pre-schoolers, with children aged 3–4 years spending more than twice as much time per week watching television (14 h) than online (6 h). Further research raised the concern that children 's cumulative exposure to television advertising may contribute to increased materialism, and subsequent research has confirmed a positive relationship between television advertising exposure and a materialistic value orientation (Watkins, Aitken, Robertson, Theyne, Williams, 2016). Though this expresses concern regarding advertisements, it still exhibits how influential advertising is and its effects are, on all of society. While examining the topic of television, it is also important to address how product placement in television shows as well as films, can influence the audiences watching. A prime example of product placement, exists within the James Bond film, Skyfall and Mr. Bond’s liking to Heineken beer. Throughout the early stages of the film when Bond is hiding from the world, he enjoys a few Heinekens while at his beach hut and at the bar. According to an event study in 2002, The event study of 126 product placements in successful films during 2002