Advertising does have intrinsic value to individuals, businesses, and society. Advertising helps people realize services and products that they want or need in their lives. Roughly 15% of people report they buy things after seeing them advertised. The ads help to develop a connection with the consumer, leading up to a purchase. By viewing commercials for various versions of a product, people can find the ‘best fit’ of an item they have been wanting to purchase by showing more detailed information on the products in the advertisements. Advertising helps businesses to get the word out on their products to the broader public. Using various types of media, such as TV, radio, newspapers, and social media, companies can reach many potential customers. Advertising through all these various outlets can also help expand a company’s customer base, as they are able to reach new customers. Small businesses are also able to better compete with larger businesses by using their more limited advertising funds in targeted advertising and utilizing social media opportunities. Advertising benefits society overall by helping to drive competition between brands which results in new and more advanced products as well as better prices for the consumer. The recognized value of advertising has helped create jobs in many different fields, as there will be advertising positions in any type of business that markets their product or service.
The government should be able to regulate, and enforce these regulations on, the advertising of all companies, especially companies whose products can hurt people like those in the cigarette, alcohol, gun, and gambling industries. One way to regulate advertising on these products is by limiting the number of commercials companies in these fields can put out on a quarterly basis. These ads should also be limited in length. Another method to regulate these industries is for the government to screen prospective ads to ensure unreasonable tactics, such as marketing cigarettes to children, will not be used.
As far as regulating advertisements aimed at children, there should be even more strict regulations on which companies can advertise, what they can advertise, how often ads run in a day, time length of the ads, and the time-of-day certain ads are able to run. These regulations must be even more unyielding for children’s networks and advertising during children’s programming.
Companies, for the most part, cannot be counted on to police themselves when it comes to advertising. Most state and local governments lack the necessary personnel or funding to be effective in limiting and regulating advertising, so this job falls to the FTC. The FTC, or Federal Trade Commission, is a federal governmental agency tasked with protecting consumers against marketplace fraud as well as helping companies understand and follow advertising regulations. The FTC should be given more power to regulate and police the advertising industry. They should oversee every advertisement before it is presented to the public. Advertising should also be more evidence-based, including the usage of clear data, to help consumers better understand if the product or service will be a fit for them. There should also be harsh penalties set up to ensure companies take responsibility if their product does result in harm. Companies must make customers aware of possible harmful side effects from their products. The company should also be responsible for their customer’s medical bills incurred due to use of their product. Further, any products found to result in death should be pulled from sales and advertising.
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