Is Mass Media Marketing Effective?

Despite whether you are looking for it or not, advertisement is everywhere. In recent years, advertisement has transcended the boundaries of text, television, and film and has definitely converged with each and every one of our personal lives. It doesn’t matter is you are listening to music, eating food, or even taking a walk in your favorite park, you will experience an advertisement of some sort. There is no denying that we live in a culture where the influence of the persuaders is unavoidable. The only question is whether or not this overbearing, converged, boundary transcending technique is effective.

I’m going to analyze the effects that a few different marketing ploys have on me. It is no secret that I am addicted to watching television shows on the internet. This used to be an illegal activity, yet most television stations now allow viewers to watch their shows online. The only catch is that in order to watch these shows, you must endure short commercial clips of one product per episode. Since one product can be assigned to a specific show, the persuaders have more control over their target audience. This technique is definitely effective. For example a set of commercials for the new R-rated comedy Extract attached to the online episodes of my favorite show South Park are more effective than if the same commercials air on a television channel during a family show such as American Idol. Since I am watching a comedy for adults, theoretically I would be interested in a movie of the same nature.

The other day I was on the popular website MySpace, listening to a band’s CD. This particular band was streaming their entire CD online before it’s release date. This chance to hear the band’s entire new record was extremely enticing for me. Unfortunately to do so, I had to sit through an annoying advertisement about a completely irrelevant product every two or three songs. I paid no attention to the advertisements, and eventually gave up listening to the unreleased CD. These advertisements weren’t related to the band I was enjoying, or even music in general, definitely not an effective marketing ploy.

According to my research, the effectiveness of mass media marketing is directly related to the relativity of the ploy to the avenue it is tagged to. For instance an advertisement for a new opera would be more effective near a traditional theatre as opposed to the same advertisement at a rodeo in Texas.