Advertising- boon or bane

Advertising is mainstay of much of modern economy and modes of communication. Modern Economy has taken advertisement as its key ingredient. Advertising is not only an ingredient of the industry but also a massive industry in itself.Advertising can be defined as paid propagation of a product. It aims to make the consumer aware of a product and attempts to create a desire to purchase the product. In its most benign and useful form, advertising is a source of information. Through information it empowers the consumers and helps them to make efficient choices. It also creates a viable business model. Advertisements subsidize the cost of information products such as newspapers, TV programmes and internet pages/products. This way these products stay affordable and accessible to common people on a mass scale. 

On negative side, advertising creates false needs, corrupts the agenda of media and leads to privacy concerns in the internet era. Most of the modern day consumerism can be attributed to the lure of advertising. Sleek advertisements create aspirations which may not be really needed to have a happy life. False desires may cause agony, strife and mutual hatred among the people. 

When advertising forms the base of media empires, and advertising model decisively more prevalent than the subscription model of media business, serious problems arise. This leaves newspapers, TV, Internet platform cripplingly dependent on advertisers. This results in skewering of agenda towards the interest of advertisers than towards the readers. Editorial policies of the media organization start getting subservient to the marketing department. This really corrupts the public sphere and compromises media’s capacity to question dominant forces. Recent Cambridge Analytica- Facebook expose clearly outlines the dangers for privacy when getting advertisement at any cost becomes the driving force. 

While advertising has it severe disadvantages, it will have to be tolerated as necessary evil, till the time some real alternative business model is found. 

Dr Bhavna
Principal
Lovely Public Senior Secondary School
Priyadarshini Vihar
New Delhi