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Media is often referred to as mass media, this form of communication has been used by companies to promote their products. This allows innovative ideas and concepts to be shared with other people through forms of mass media such as newspapers, magazines and the television. As technology continues to advance, advertising techniques have advanced as well, by enticing, shaping and creating consumerism and needs where luxury is turned into a form of necessity. This essay will argue some of the issues and concerns of advertising techniques.

The role played by advertising in mass media: as consumer product & service information ancillary to programming
Advertising paying for programing
Advertising is often used to help pay the costs for free media such as television channels that are funded by advertisements which helps reduce the company’s financial cost. The role advertising plays in mass media is the promotion of products and ideas which influence our choices and decisions on what it is we consider important. Media companies are dependent on advertisements because of the revenue they receive. As a result, contemporary mass media is largely driven by the forces of the market.
The Audience as the product
Companies have to sell products to its consumers for profit, where the customers are the corporate advertisers who buy demographic information on that specific companies audience group (Noam Chomsky – What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream). Advertisers in turn use the information product from the media company’s audience to generate revenue for them because advertisers are the market (Chomsky). Therefore in mass media, corporations sell their audience to other corporations for profit.
How critical theory views the advertising rol...

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...ing what media does. Hence we have animated television programs as those developed several years ago, He-Man and She Ra, where the programs primarily were introduced to market massive lines of toys for the Christmas season. We are submitting innocent children to strategies of a mega-million dollar advertising industry and most parents are incapable of responding to sales campaigns of this magnitude. MTV is another example. Here we have entertainment programming which doubles as a continuous commercial for music CDs, clothing lines, talk shows involving music personalities, and a variety of other marketing ploys. (Richard Vincent). This is how the market imposes its desires on the media, where there is the power to influence consumers also affects the perspectives and ideologies portrayed in the mainstream when it comes to international political and economic issues.

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