There is noticable decline in number of people whose decisions are shaped by different sources of advertisement. While the trend has probably been caused by multiple factors, including both shift in mindset or simply worsened effectiveness of ads, I firmly believe that humanity as a whole is on the right paths due to increased self-awareness and decreased herd behavior.
First things first, we should dive deeper into the nature of advertisements themselves. They are based on people’s spontaneous desires, such as instant cry of a baby wishing a chocolate bar when walking near a candy shop. And companies, understanding human nature, try to exploit on this fact, creating appealing banners or promotional videos for their products. However, over time these so called “hooks” simply stop working, as people gradually understood them. Therefore, that spark in our wish to buy a product now plays a weaker role in our decisions than it used to be in the past, when such ads were just emerging. In other words, the constant exposure to these fliers and ad banners has diminished their primary feature of attracting people.
Another less obvious, but maybe more important, cause for this change is uselessness of these ads. They became so repetitive over time, that people do not get attracted by what they see. Consequently, it became extremely challenging to grab people’s attention, with only a fraction of ads ending up doing their job. It is also partly because of ideas’ shortage to create effective advertisements, which again essentially makes them very similar, or sometimes even the same.
And regarding my honest opinion, I truly believe that such alteration going on in the world is for the better. I always like to consider ads as propaganda-both are designed to make you want something and persuade you to buy it. So, here comes my reasoning of putting ads in a list of bad influences. And this, in turn, makes their declined effect on population a desirable outcome. Notwithstanding this logic, there are still many drawbacks of ads, including frequent scam schemes, not-matching or even false claims about products just to increase the sales. Thus, the less ads we have, the less such issues we will face in a long-term.
In conclusion, with the rise of social media outlets and myriads content creators, advertisements has failed their primary job of attracting constumers, leading to their declined impact on people’s decisions. And I, considering the roots of such ads and their potential risks, think that this might lead humanity to a better future.