Who Likes Consumer Generated Ads? Not Young Adults

I appreciate this article. I am among the young adults who distrust most advertisers. I recently handed in a research paper about advertising and gender equality. I found extensive research conducted by marketers. I was appalled that advertisers activate gender identity in order to develope brand loyalty. Nobody likes to be manipulated. I believe that as more and more people become aware of the tactic advertisers use, the less effective advertising will become. Is manipulating people the only way advertisers can make money? Would they really lose that much money if they portrayed healthy images of people and relationships? I have yet to find that out. Thanks again for the article!

No surprise at all. Word of mouth, if you consider them to be "consumer generated ads", is certainly taking on the conventional ads. In hyper competitive industries like VoIP or online media, all companies are trying to trigger the viral marketing effects. YouTube, Skype, Vbuzzer, etc. etc... you can make it a long list including Google, Yahoo, Ebay......

Reality check on youth, while they are fully subscribed to brand products, the only option open for them that is all that fills the market. They shop only peer accepted brands with peers, and then they choose from other influential school group's selections. The street and magazines, can have full sway on product acceptance by the influential peer groups, they don't care. The anti attitudes of youth to consumer generated ads and ads in general are mostly a peer response affected while fully committing into the market.

Of course it's rooted in seperation from company sponsored messages aka The Man. Young people are very savvy at seeing the marketing/advertising message and can easily seperate the shill from the UGC/CGC (think wheat from shaff). In fact I would assume that many consumers, both young and old, see the consumer generated content approach as Madison Avenue trying too hard to be cool i.e. using the trendy low budget "user generated" look to attempt "be down" with "what's hot." The problem is that young people (and everyone else) knows exactly who's cutting the check for the advertising.

I disagree completely. I'm a baby boomer, so maybe I shouldn't speak for the kids - but I have two daughters and a son in the age-range cited here and...rather than choose "consumer generated ads" as the focus, the study should have looked at advertising and marketing in general. Savvy kids today see right through false advertising, regardless of who created it.

They're smart, they're talented, and they don't need us to tell them what to buy or how to buy. I suspect consumer generated ads that are clever, humorous, and on the mark, influence them just as much as anything else. Why? Because THOSE ads generate attention - from their peer group. AND, these kids listen to their peers.

I really feel that this 'study' is bogus. It doesn't fit in with what I experience on a day to day basis, talking with these kids, and asking them their opinion. But...I could be wrong. We'll see, won't we? Because THEY'LL be the ones generating the ads tomorrow.

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