Advertising and the Proliferation of Media Content

As discussed in Adordno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (The Consumer Society Reader, 2000), the culture industry is an entity so extensive as to warrant the need for the repetition and reproduction. Because the industry is so far-reaching, the dissemination of media products requires meticulous planning and industrial organization. As technology has advanced and research has been done concerning consumer preferences and practices, the variety and sheer amount of advertising has increased exponentially.

Integrated marketing, for instance, has allowed for the customization of media content to meet the needs of individual users. Putting the same media into different formats, users can consume content in the way they choose and media caters to individual experience. Audiences have become fragmented as a result of this customization, creating change in the media community: people attend only to media targeted specifically to them. Transmedia storytelling is another technique used for getting the message heard. Rather than relying on only one mode of transferring a message, producers make use of multiple media in attempts to express media content. This method does, however, have the potential for overkill.

As a result of the proliferation of new media content, people have become almost immune to the process of consuming culture: “so completely is it subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. Therefore it amalgamates with advertising… Advertising is its elixir of life.” Because the innumerable products of the culture industry have become little more than visual distraction, the industry has required advertising to revive itself. It is the excitement and novelty of ads that attracts viewer attention, supports the culture industry and makes sales. The key to advertising success is getting noticed. Regardless of the fact that consumers can see through the advertisements they are presented with, they continue to buy the products being advertised. The question of advertising success still remains, however; how to advertisements break through the clutter?


Adorno, T.W., & Horkheimer, M. (2000). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. In J. Schor & D. Holt (Eds.), The Consumer Society Reader (pp. 3-19). New York: The New Press.