While we think of advertising as a realm mostly relegated to television, magazines, billboards – all the types we’ve been so used to for a long time now – the game is changing with the Internet. Advertisers are now infiltrating your social networks, your search patterns, and targeting you in a way never done before. Viral advertising all over the Web can snare you into buying stuff you don’t really need.
In 2010, advertising rose 5.8% as compared to the 11.9% drop from the previous two years combined. Have you noticed a trend in more targeted advertising? I know I have, from all over the Web. Knowing what’s enough for me has already put me in the mindset to ignore what they’re trying to do. And you can, too.
Even by 2012, the Internet will overtake magazines to become the second-largest advertising segment behind television. Internet advertising is going to be the fastest-growing type of advertising in the next five years, increasing by an average of 13% a year.
Here are some numbers for you: by 2014, the U.S. advertising market is expected to exceed $200 billion in spending. Billion. I hear a number like that and I think of a defense budget, not advertising. That kind of money will affect a whole lot of people in this country. By 2015, it’s expected to reach $207 billion. All that money, meant to make you buy stuff.
But you can do something about it. Don’t buy into their advertising, no matter how much they’re spending! Part of being a postconsumer is knowing what kind of dirty tricks the advertisers are up to in order to keep you from finding the satisfaction of enough. Change can start in the smallest of places, with anybody – and that’s you!
How are you staying away from the increasing media messages? Like us on Facebook and tell us!
