Marketers invest in various media platforms to influence consumer behaviour. Advertisement on every media platform has a different composition that engages the consumers in a distinct way.

For decades, getting in front of targeted consumers has always been one of the biggest challenges for businesses of all sizes. Marketers invest heavily in different media platforms and channels to influence consumer behaviour in a positive way. Several times business owners have to make difficult decisions on which advertising platform to invest their valuable resources. This can create a lot of confusion if not done right.

Every year, the advertising industry spends hundreds of billions of dollars in an attempt to influence consumers’ buying habits.

Generally, the composition of advertising for various media formats is as diverse as their reach. This is to say that each medium has a composition of its ads that makes them unique from the rest. Because of this diverseness in ads, there seems to be a frequent failure of cross-platform media campaigns.

Advertising is a form of communication used to influence or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behaviour with respect to a commercial offering.

The way advertisements are designed can have a profound effect on how consumers behave. The font, colour, and images used in the ads all play a role in creating a certain feeling or message.

The study of consumer behaviour helps marketers understand the psychology of consumers when they make decisions regarding purchases. Psychologists from different schools of thought have contributed to our understanding of consumer behaviour today. John Watson’s conditioning theory holds that consumers learn about products through associations made between stimuli. These associations are developed through pairing images with product information or concepts until the image becomes synonymous with the feeling or product concept in the mind of the consumer. Watson’s theory has been used primarily in print advertising but has also been successfully used in television commercials.

The learning theory holds that people are shaped by their experiences and goes a step further than Watson’s conditioning theory to postulate that people actively seek out information before making a decision. This theory has been used effectively in ads where people are shown seeking out answers to life’s questions with the help of a particular brand

What is John Watson’s behaviourism theory?

John Watson is considered by many to be the founder of behaviourism. Behaviourism is primarily concerned with observable behaviour, especially under the influence of stimulus control (a changing environment), and the acquisition of new habits or conditioned responses. Thus, behaviours are learned through trial and error, formed by a person’s associations and relationships with reality, and influenced by their genetic disposition.

How ads affect us

The effect of advertising on consumer behaviour is complex and multidimensional. As an advertisement, you can be persuasive and lead to a sale, but you can also be ineffective and annoying. You can be memorable or forgettable, funny or boring, truthful or misleading. You can also be an art form or a science.

An effective advertisement is one that persuades consumers to buy your product or service; it is an advertisement that makes people want to buy your product or service. Your ad must also create an emotional response from consumers, such as excitement or curiosity. It has been shown that an effective ad creates emotions in consumers that lead them to buy products and services. If your ad does not create these emotions, it will not be effective at influencing consumers’ behaviour.

Advertising is a powerful communication force and a vital marketing tool. It is, however, not always clear what the effects of advertising are and whether they can be predicted or not. When you’re writing an ad, you have to consider how your message will affect people, and how that effect may change when it’s viewed on different platforms.

Advertising has the ability to influence behaviour. It can persuade people to purchase a product, service, or idea. It can also encourage people to change their attitude about a brand or company.

Subliminal advertising

Subliminal advertising is a method in which messages are embedded in ads to influence consumer behaviour without the consumer’s awareness.

These messages are so quick that the human brain does not even register them, but nonetheless, these messages can influence consumers’ decisions.

The reason that these method works is because our unconscious mind sees everything around us even when we are not consciously aware of it. The brain also never forgets anything that it has learned, so once an unconscious mind has seen something once it will always remember what it has seen.

This type of advertising was first described in 1957 by market researcher James Vicary. He claimed that he increased sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn by embedding the messages “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Eat popcorn” in a movie ad. However, Vicary later admitted that he had made up his results.

The use of subliminal advertising has been a controversial topic since it was first used in 1957. Many researchers have questioned its effectiveness, while advertisers have defended its use. Currently, most countries’ laws ban subliminal advertising.

There are strict rules about the use of subliminal advertising in some countries, mainly in Europe and Canada. In Australia or Britain, for example, it is banned entirely, but there are exceptions for scientific research purposes and for artistic expression.

In the United States, there are still no federal regulations regarding subliminal advertising. The Federal Trade Commission has not yet issued any rules on this matter either.

The rise of data-driven targeted advertising: a threat to our privacy?

We’ve all seen targeted ads while browsing the web. If you’re looking at sweaters on Amazon, you might see an ad for sweaters on Pinterest when you go thereafter. This saves you time and frustration — you don’t have to wade through endless ads for products you aren’t interested in, and the ones that do appear are more likely to be useful to you.

But there are some downsides as well. Many of us have had the experience of talking about something with a friend or family member, only to find it appearing as an ad right after. Is this just a coincidence? Probably not — our phones and other digital devices are almost always listening to us, and data from these conversations often end up in the hands of advertisers.

Targeted advertising might look like the ultimate win-win. Consumers receive ads that are relevant to their interests and needs, while advertisers can reach a more specific audience and get a higher return on investment.

However, the personalization of ads is often achieved through the collection of large amounts of data about consumers, which can be perceived as an intrusion on their privacy.

This trend of targeted advertising has led to unprecedented access to consumer information. According to the New York Times, companies like Google and Facebook have compiled more than half a billion pieces of data on the average user. This includes everything from purchase history and location data to relationship status and political views. While this is great for advertisers, some experts are concerned that it could be having unintended consequences on privacy and personal autonomy.

So what exactly is at risk? Because these ads are so effective at directing online behaviour, there are concerns that consumers will be less in control of their own actions than they think. For instance, you might be actively searching for a hotel room in Munich only to find yourself booking a flight back home because you saw an ad for your favourite restaurant just a block away from where you live.

From ads to products and back again.

• The effect of advertising on consumers seems pretty straightforward: you see an ad, it convinces you to buy the product, and your purchase feeds market data back to the company. This is a classic example of how businesses use psychology and marketing strategies to predict and influence what people will buy.
• But this process is actually more like a feedback loop. As people are buying certain products, companies are reacting to that and putting out ads for these things — this influences other people’s purchases and creates a reinforcing cycle.
• Consumers don’t live in a bubble; the process by which we choose what products to buy isn’t just inside our heads. Rather, we’re constantly receiving messages from companies about what they want us to buy, which then has an effect on what we do buy.

Advertising has an effect on our purchasing habits, but how much of an effect remains unclear and is subject to debate.

Advertising has an effect on our purchasing habits, but how much of an effect remains unclear and is subject to debate.

In the past ten years, advertising has changed dramatically. The rise of the internet, social media, big data, artificial intelligence and digital marketing has meant that advertisers can now personally target their ad messages to specific consumers.

How does this affect consumer behaviour? Do ads influence us in the way advertisers hope they will? Does everyone respond in the same way? Or are some people more influenced by advertising than others?