impact of advertising

• Impact of Advertising on Children (Social)
• Social learning theory


  • Bandura showed that children observe and imitate the behaviour of role models
  • Children can observe and imitate the behaviour of role models they see in advertisements (particularly if they see vicarious reinforcement)
  • Adverts may use models that are similar to them (age/gender) or maybe celebrities/characters
  • Adverts usually focus on the main character receiving some sort of reward from the product – popularity, happiness, etc.
  • Demonstrates how children are influenced in all aspects of their behaviour by their primary role models (parents)
  • There are lots of real-life examples where children have imitated behaviour witnessed on television (not just adverts)
• This advert was withdrawn from TV after doctors reported children coming in with perforated eardrums saying 'I got Tango'd'
• Positive and negative reinforcement in television adverts aimed at children


  • Rewards- Children getting attention from friends for having a particular product. Aimed at parents- get the toy to remove children's upset/pestering behaviour.
  • Rewards- Children seeing how happy the toy will make them.
• Owen and Padron (2015) analysed the content of voiced narratives in ads for action figures aimed at girls ('Bratz') and boys ('Batman')


  • Bratz ads - included many words related to fantasy and appearance ('sparkly', 'dreamy')
  • Batman ads - included more aggressive and power-related language and more references to science
  • Limiting gender roles in advertising limits children's ideas about how they play and what they play with, which may ultimately limit the types of roles they will try out as adults (Smith, 1994)
  • Owen and Padron (2015) suggest that gender-stereotyped language of ads aimed at children may affect how they perceive gender roles, 'normalising' stereotyped behaviour, especially as the researchers claim that children tend to accept media representations without evaluating them
• Some companies are moving away from advertising using stereotypical gender roles (e.g. Toys R Us in Sweden) but many won't, for fear of reduced profitability.
• Key Research – Johnson and Young (2002)


  • Qualitative Analysis (Analysing the meaning of content/key themes)
  • Quantitative Analysis (Analysing patterns of content)
  • Research method used for studying different forms of communication documentation
  • Can be somewhat replicable, but often subjective. Definitely no cause and effect.
• Procedure and corresponding results in the Johnson and Young (2002) study


  1. Gendered voice, target audience, voice-overs, verbs

  2. Gendered voice, targeting, voice-overs, verbs
• Findings from the Johnson and Young (2002) study


  • Children are being told that there is gender equality by teachers and parents, however, the language used in adverts and life does not support this
  • Children accept these roles, language and behaviour at face value without challenging them
  • Ads reinforce the language used by boys and girls- boys use terms that relate to power, girls like to talk
  • Standardised procedures - adverts were all classified in the same way (e.g. using the same 5 different verb elements) and these were mostly clear, unambiguous and did not overlap
  • Some subjectivity involved, as researchers are deciding which category different verbs belonged to. Some concepts are hard to operationalise, e.g. the 'aggressiveness' and 'sing-songness' of an ad voice-over is very subjective
  • Some elements of the study were tested by independent raters as well as the researchers (to check for inter-rater reliability) although this was only done for a sample of the research, not all of it
  • The sample of ads may not be representative of all advertising aimed at children because ads were all from children's cartoon programmes
  • Children may be presented with quite different gender representations in ads aimed at adults or a family audience
  • Two sources were excluded (Disney Channel and Cartoon network) because they were subscription only channels. The audience for these channels may have been wealthier or have other characteristics which meant that ads aimed at them were different from the ones in the study
• Interactionist view of the impact of TV advertising


  • Children's internal cognitive processes can also influence how they respond to what they see in adverts. For example, a girl who expects to be rewarded for acting in accordance with her stereotypical gender role may be more likely to be influenced by what she see in adverts
  • The topic of gender stereotyping could be controversial – should gender differences be encouraged or downplayed in children?
  • Different viewpoints would provide arguments for both, and researchers should be aware how politicians and the media (or indeed any other organisation) could use their results for their own purposes
  • Also – should advertisers care about gender stereotyping. Shouldn't they be allowed to market/sell/advertise their products as they wish?
• Many children, adolescents and adults spend considerable amounts of time in front of the TV
• Having access to countless media outlets, increases children's exposure to both positive and negative TV content
• Films and computer games now have a rating to try and ensure that children don't see age-inappropriate material, as for younger children it may be copied and cause harm
• Ways in which adverts could negatively impact a child


  • Greater brand awareness
  • Preference for one product over another
  • Unintentional effects
• Pester-power


  Parent-child conflict arises out of children becoming aware of advertised brands and developing a preference for one over the other, then requesting or demanding their parents buy them
• Social comparison theory


  When children see ads, they see people who have achieved fulfilment through buying certain products. If children compare their own lives to what they see in ads, they experience dissatisfaction because the contrast is overwhelming
• Research has consistently shown a correlation between children's viewing and their learned behaviours and attitudes
• Advertisers know that behaviour that is reinforced is more likely to be strengthened, and use this psychological technique to sell their product
• Advertising engages viewers and consumers in a much larger cultural process than we may at first be aware of
• Advertisers need to create a market for products, such as children's toys, and to do this they use messages that draw on and perpetuate existing dominant ideas about gender, ethnicity and class
• Browne found that adverts aimed at boys were more active, aggressive and instrumental than those aimed at girls
• Browne also found that in adverts with both genders, the boys tended to be more dominant and were more likely to demonstrate or explain something, portraying boys as more knowledgeable
• Browne found that girls were never seen as playing with boy-orientated toys such as cars, and the same with the boys with girls' toys
• Browne found that girls in the adverts were displayed as being more shy and giggly
• The narratives in ads aimed at girls included many words related to fantasy and appearance ('sparkly', 'dreamy')
• The narratives accompanying boys' ads included more aggressive and power-related language and more references to science
• Gender stereotyping in advertising


  Limiting gender roles in advertising limits children's ideas about how they play and what they play with, which may ultimately limit the types of roles they will try out as adults
• In total 188 toy adverts were recorded. When combined across all years, adverts for boy-orientated toys (102) outnumbered those orientated towards girls (63) with relatively few non-specific gender adverts (23)
• 55% of the girl-oriented and 53% of the boy/girl-oriented ads included speech from an on-screen character, but this figure was only 26% for boy-oriented ads
• 21% of the ads aimed at boys contained the word 'power' or 'powerful' – these words were used 45 times, but only once in girl-oriented ads
• The most commonly advertised toys for boys were action figures, but for girls it was 'posable figures' such as Barbie dolls and animal figures
• There was a male voice-over in every one of the boy-oriented and girl/boy-orientated ads. 89% of the girl-orientated ads contained female voices
• Gender exaggeration was heard in 80% of the adverts for boys and 87% of adverts for girls, and unsurprisingly there tended to be no exaggeration in toys aimed for both boys and girls
• Boy-oriented ads contained over 12 times as many competition/destruction verbs than girl-oriented ads
• There were significantly more feeling/nurturing verbs in girl-oriented ads, and many of these were linked to mothering (e.g. love, feed, bathe)
• Differences between boy-oriented and girl-oriented ads


  • Different types of verbs used (e.g. pass, throw, zoom for boys; skip, walk, dance for girls)
• TV advertising aimed at children can reinforce stereotypes such as traditional gender roles and encourage gender-stereotypical play
• TV advertising has been heavily criticised by organisations such as the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for encouraging unhealthy eating habits and obesity in young people
• Media literacy


  The ability to navigate, interpret and process the media we consume
• Many children below 7-9 years do not know when they are being manipulated or lied to by adults