Ads: Good or Bad?

And what to do about them

If you grew up watching TV in the 80s or 90s, you were absolutely inundated with advertisements. It’s not just that the ads popped up every 10 minutes during Ghostbusters or Power Rangers or Animaniacs. It’s that the TV shows themselves were ads for products. Barbie and G.I. Joe were toys before they were TV shows. The Care Bears got their start on greeting cards, for crying out loud! One of my favorite movies, The Wizard, was basically a two-hour ad for Nintendo starring Fred Savage, in which Super Mario Brothers 3 was unveiled as the climax of the movie. 

Read that again: the video game ad wasn’t just in the movie. And it wasn’t at the climax of the movie. The ad was the climax of the movie!

Nowadays, kids watch their shows on streaming services. Instead of advertising only toys, they advertise other shows on the same streaming service. An endless loop of Paramount+ shows leading you back to other Paramount+ shows. But that just demonstrates how powerful advertising is: streaming channels could make a lot of money collecting ad revenue from partners selling products, but they find it more valuable to advertise...themselves. Advertising works.¹

The most 90s ads of all time. Mentos ads hit the sweet spot between joy and irony.

How does it work? To answer this question, I wasn’t content to find a mere meta-analysis. I found a meta-meta-analysis. A study of studies studying 1,700 other studies! Here’s how this mega-summary found ads affect our behavior:²

• They make products more acceptable (less strange) to us

• They have an emotional impact

• They help us remember products

• They tell a story that wraps all these emotions, thoughts, and attitudes into an identity called a brand.³

Here’s what a brand identity is supposed to do. The other day I was at the store buying cold medicine (to remedy the annual plague that strikes families when the kids go back to school). I found myself standing far back from the display rack, not reading the labels, looking for the shapes and colors of familiar brands to guide the unstuffing of my stuffy nose. There I was, a sufficiently literate person, searching for shapes and colors, subjects which form the core of the preschool curriculum! That's the power of branding, and it's why we have so much advertising. We can recognize a product at a glance. It feels familiar.

What’s the economic function of branding? In a mass market, a brand is a stand-in for a merchant’s reputation. If we all lived in one small town, merchants would have to keep good names if people were to do business with them. But with countless companies selling to millions of consumers, large companies need a way to manage their reputations. You might pay more for a branded product than a generic one that’s just as good because you know the brand’s name, story, and reputation. Buying it is less risky. (But if you’re a high-information buyer, you can save money buying generics.)

Think of brands and ads as similar to how a person interacts with other people. How we present ourselves and how we want to be thought of is our brand. Our clothes are like ads; a superficial but important introduction to our brand. If we wish to maintain our brand, we have to act in alignment with it in everything we do.

Parents need to prep their kids to understand how ads work. This is for several reasons:

• You won’t be able to shield them entirely from ads, since ads are everywhere. (But you should always shield kids from things that are genuinely bad.)

• You want the kids to understand what ads are doing, both so they can be smart consumers, and so they can be smart communicators.

Here’s how I prep my kids for consuming ads. When ads pop up on the TV, I ask these questions. These questions are mainly about grown-up ads during sports events, perhaps selling air freshener or insurance or plumbing services.

1. “What do you think they’re selling?” Kids’ answers to this can be so cute, because it’s not always obvious to them.

2. “How is this ad supposed to make you feel?” This question is important because it helps kids learn how purposefully designed the ads are. Ads promise you that you’ll feel they way the people in the ad feel: modern, organized, relieved, connected, confident, unburdened, unafraid. 

3. Follow-up question: “can the product really make you feel like that?”

4. “Does this ad make you want the product more?” This is a fun one, because sometimes the answer is obviously “yes,” like when it’s dinnertime and we’re watching an ad for chicken sandwiches. Other times it’s obviously “no,” like when it’s an ad for tax software.

5. “What story is this ad telling?”⁴

Dan Kennedy, VP of Marketing for the Focus Group, a company that helps non-profits raise funds, says “Marketing is a tool. And like all tools it can be used for good or for harm. When used for good it adds value to our lives and those we care about. It builds us up. When used for harm it preys on the weak… We should reward those who use marketing for good and ignore the rest.” You can use the list of questions above to help the kids spot the difference.

We should deal with ads like we do with other forms of communication: with teaching. Teach the kids about what products can do (fix a problem) and can’t do (bring lasting joy and peace). Teach them how to plan to buy things we need, how to communicate effectively and consistently, and to always tell the truth.

So now you know. Remember what G.I. Joe taught us about knowing.

1. I asked my children what they do when ads come on. They said “mostly just mute them.” I can’t say whether this is normal kid behavior. My five-year-old did say “you think about Legos, and they go into your brain, and then into your dreams.” I was disturbed by this, until my nine-year-old explained that she was describing the ad exactly, in which kids dream about Legos.

2. The meta-meta-analytic effect size was 0.2, meaning ads were associated with a change in people's behavior of 0.2 standard deviations more than control groups. It’s considered a “small” effect on average, but of course there is huge variation among all 1,700 studies.

3. Katie Gilstrap, a Marketing professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, explained ad research findings to me. She said that “Advertising’s impact is evident in increased sales, brand awareness, and market share. Apple’s ‘Shot on iPhone; campaign illustrates how advertising can drive both sales and customer loyalty, helping the brand remain a leader. Consistent advertising helps brands like Apple and Nike achieve top-of-mind awareness, while companies with high ad spending, such as Procter & Gamble, often maintain a competitive edge. One study … found that campaigns with purely emotional content performed nearly twice as well as those with only rational content.”

4. Bonus tip for adults: don’t ever buy something right when you see it advertised. Wait. When you see it again, maybe write it down on a shopping list. If you see it a third time, then buy it. Avoid impulse buys. You’ll live with slightly fewer conveniences, but it will be worth it.