Children Recognition of Advertisements on Television and on Web Pages
This research investigates children’s ability to recognize advertisements from televisions and web pages. Their recognition of advertisement is measurable by how they influence the purchasing power and their response to these advertisements. However, they are not the real spenders children influence recurrent expenditures in their households. I conducted this case study to determine the influence of such advertisements and the results that follow once these children respond to them.
1) A description of the study population
The study population included children between the ages of five years to ten years. I used these children as the law recognizes them as children and they are mature to understand language to listen and understand English. I drew these children from religions races and social classes. The only thing that was common among them was their ability to understand English as I used English to run the advertisements they were to identify. While at it, I also investigated laws in the country that regulated advertisements to different groups of people.
2) A brief statement of the research methods
I used direct interaction with these children as a research method. It was easy for me to get the children to respond to my survey as children at this age like watching television. They are also quite honest, as at that age they cannot withhold any information due to malice to interfere with the results. I gathered children around a television, run adverts, and asked them to identify adverts from television programs. I used enticements such as candies and cakes to give to children who were participating to ensure they remained interested in the study. I also questioned them further in the days that followed to determine if the adverts I was running for them influenced purchasing power in any way. The only weakness of this investigation was the follow up as it was hard to determine if the children were remembering the purchases their parents made.
3) A brief statement of the evaluation tool (metrics) used
To analyze the data, I collected the results and grouped the results. Grouping these results and tabulating the numbers enabled me to compare and draw informed conclusions according to visible similarities and differences in the compared results. After this tabulation, I compiled the results of investigation according to the results.
4) A summary of the conclusion presented
During the investigations, I discovered that children recognize and differentiate advertisements and programs. Children have a high ability to remember, and some even memorize catchy advertisements and repeat them once they rerun. Many children identified television advertisements mostly because the media repeats them often. If children watch the same advertisements over time, they easily remember them once they see them. Another factor that makes children identify advertisements is because the adverts are usually short and mostly catchy. Different Medias indicate they are taking a commercial break to run advertisements and children soon learn to differentiate programs and adverts (Blades & Oates, 2012).
New Medias have come up with new ways to advertise. The internet is one of these Medias and targets children as they also have a considerable amount of spending power. The internet uses web pages to run cheap advertisements. Companies launch web pages in the internet for little pay and upload advertisements on their products. To determine the level of identification, I created several web pages and let the children identify advertisements on the web pages. In the web pages, I created new advertisements to protect children from recognizing the adverts from somewhere else. In the web pages, I required a control investigation so I used adults to come to agreement what were advertisements and what were not.
Children at the age of six easily identified advertisements on the television, and differentiate adult and children targeted advertisements. These children can easily respond to these advertisements from televisions, and they influence the commodities these children buy. These advertisements mostly advertise commodities that are harmful to the health of these children. About 25% of children are able to identify web pages advertisements at the age of six (Blades & Oates, 2012). At 8 years, only about 50% can identify and 75% at the age of 10. These children understand the persuasive nature of advertisements once they start buying the products and can explain the intentions of these advertisements.
5) Your evaluation of the work
This article is reliable as I conducted the study and compiled the results from an actual study. I collected thoughts and responses from children who watched these advertisements and established responses by these kids to the advertisements. This study is applicable as it can help the administrators to regulate the way the media runs advertisements. Parents can also use the research findings to control what they let their children access. For students who may wish to continue this research they can use this research to get ideas for a further research. As I arrange the research is systematically, the students can use the methods to go progress their research.
References
Blades, M., Li, S., & Oates, C. (2012). Children’s Recognition of Advertisements on Television
and on Web Pages. Appetite.
