The Value of Advertising - Essay Example

To support my views, I consider the choice of Unappreciated Benefits of advertising and commercial Speech by Adam Thierer. According to Adam Thierer, State officials, the Attorney General, and Federal representatives are at the forefront of trying to regulate the process of advertising and commercial marketing. Many governing initiatives are being proposed while some are already in action. Adam Thierer mentions that these governing rules will adversely affect or reduce the process of commercial advertising or marketing on several platforms. The expected impact of this reduction in advertising and marketing are direct and indirect harm to consumer welfare, and the main cause is because most consumers; individuals, the community, and society as a whole, depend on commercial speech for their respective brand of products (Clow, Kenneth, & Donald Baack, 67).

According to Adam Thierer, affected platforms comprise some of the old-fashioned media, which itself includes Radio and TV broadcasters and newspapers. Other affected platforms include brand-new media outlets which comprise online networks, the internet, social networks, mobile devices, video games, and some cooperative televisions. This increased governing activism would come into action about products and issues like alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, children’s ads online advertising, during children’s TV programs, the soundness of ads on TVs, product testimonials, and product engagement advertising. Possibly, the most prominent effort of these governing rules is the latest push to enforce a regulatory system on data collection and online advertising (Gifford & Clive, 37). And this was all in the name of enabling consumer privacy. And this is expected to include a “Do Not Track” technique. This technique automatically blocks data collection and advertising through the compulsory renovation of web browsers (Clow, Kenneth & Donald Baack, 68).

Several policymakers or regulatory officials make an assortment of classically unsubstantiated claims about the negative effects of advertising and online marketing on consumers; individuals, the community, and society. According to Adam Thierer, federal policymakers of the late 1970s, particularly the Federal Trade Commission personnel, fearlessly addressed regulatory marketing and advertising citing issues like deception, offensiveness, annoyance, and its negative effects on underage children. At root, what brings together all these concerns is the conclusive anxiety about marketing and advertising being by all accounts an unnecessary or manipulative force within society. As mentioned by John Calfee of the American Enterprise Institute, this “force is the fear of persuasion”. John Calfee further states “attacks on marketing and advertising are sardonic in the extreme” since “the essence of persuasion is the absence of coercion”.

Investigations conducted by the government and some academic research organizations indicated that regardless of the best of intentions, online marketing, and advertising restrictions were causing an increase in prices, forming barriers to entry, and denying consumers the necessary information relating to goods and services. According to Adam Thierer, this latter problem attracted the attention of the Supreme Court which started ruling in the 70s that restrictions on advertising were an insult to the First Amendment. For these reasons, the courts and Federal Trade Commission largely liberalized marketing arcades and focused on minimizing deceptive advertising and consumer fraud.

Consumers generally benefit from marketing and advertising in three major ways. These include Educational benefits; Advertising educates the consumers on the goods and services around them, and this concerns the type, quality, and prices of particular products within the market. Secondly, there are the Competitive or market effects; this is mainly beneficial to the different market environments (Gifford & Clive, 42). The competitors are kept on their toes by ensuring quick responses to market issues. And this exposes the consumers to more choices thus making the offered services cheap. The last benefit is Cross-subsidization or Media promotion; this majorly benefits society by subsidizing the formation of data, updates, and entertainment.

For the above-mentioned reasons, therefore, a consistent regulatory regime against marketing and advertising will adversely affect the consumers’ welfare since it will increase prices, reduce marketplace invention and competition and restrict choices. It will generally affect the economy of a particular state. Thus, we can conclude that advertising is beneficial to individuals, the community, and society at large.