Advertising is there to make sure you're aware of something. It's telling you "Hey! There's this product/movie/service etc that you might not have known about".
I find advertising extremely useful to know about new things.
Are you seriously suggesting that Coca Cola spends a billion dollars a year to reach people who are unfamiliar with their beverage?
I'm not sure what conspiracy you think I'm suggesting. There is nothing particularly hidden about what advertisers do. Go talk to people who have made ads for a living. Or take a media literacy course. Heck, go watch the Superbowl beer commercials and tell us what novel product information is being conveyed there: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/27/top-10-super-bowl-beer-com...
The beer commercials are actually quite a bad example in this case: Coca Cola certainly don't spend billions a year to reach people unfamiliar with their beverages. Beer companies do.
A major target market for alcohol is those either underage or just starting drinking. Habits and personally preferences are frequently set very early on - Superbowl beer commercials may be designed for press, but a significant bulk of advertising money is spent by beer companies to convince people who have just started drinking that their brand is the right brand.
They're a great example of the low informational content. The point of the commercials isn't to inform people of the existence of Budweiser. As you say, the purpose is to persuade them to drink it.
This was what advertising was about in the 30s maybe. Since then its gotten sophisticated, employing tricks that prey on our comparatively unsophisticated psychology making you want things that you otherwise wouldn’t.
Besides, if advertising didn’t exist or was illegal or something, couldn’t we just create a webapp to let people exchange information about interesting products and services and that would be the end of that problem. No need for information about products and services to be so pervasively integrated into every nook and cranny of our society.
You don't have to buy everything you see just like you don't have to hit on every pretty girl that you see. We still have the power to say no, regardless of the messages. We could say that pretty girls everywhere leads to impure thoughts right? Advertising is just like a pretty girl -- you are under no obligation to act on your 'unsophisticated psychology.' if you disagree with me, then the terrorists have won.
The obvious difference is that advertising is a whole profit-driven industry consciously designed to manipulate people's thoughts and behavior, whereas pretty girls are just going about their business.
You talk about one's psychology as if it's something separate that you can choose to act upon or not. That's a false split; one's psychology is the mechanism that does the choosing. That is what is getting manipulated for profit.
Advertising is there to make sure you're aware of something. It's telling you "Hey! There's this product/movie/service etc that you might not have known about".
I find advertising extremely useful to know about new things.