On one hand it’s can be a good thing.  It lets us know about a product or service that could be of interest to us.  We might not stumble across this useful product by ourselves if it hadn’t of been for the advertisement.  But on the other hand we can be coerced into buying products we don’t really need, but think we need.  It can result in us wasting money or thinking we need to afford lifestyles that we, well, can’t afford.

In a nutshell, advertising as we now know it is about manipulating the consumer. This is down to the fact that advertisers no longer care about the consumers but instead, they are driven by results and money.