According to Forbes, we see around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements a day. That’s a lot of information being thrown in our faces. And as we all know, we want to read as little as possible to get to the point — which is why images and video are so powerful to get a message across. It doesn’t seem right, though: how can we see up to 10,000 images a day? That seems like a lot of pictures.

And that study mentioned in Forbes wasn’t centered around people in metropolitan areas. This is the ‘average American’ we are talking about: you and I. In today’s age we are so used to filtering information out as we prioritize multitasking and efficient modes of thinking and doing. We are quick to filter out what is useless to us — like a sale going on at Hollister — and what is important — like a sale at Cracker Barrel. With how fast we are at filtering what we want to see, it’s important for advertisers to find something captivating and eye-popping to get our attention.

Images have always been important in advertising, but even more so in today’s age. Advertisements in the early 1900s were primarily text based with no color in images printed on newspapers, journals, or magazines. This wasn’t a bother and was a norm since society was dependent on reading the newspaper to get their news, other than radio. The mid 1900s saw a shift of news coverage and entertainment when the television invaded the American household. It wasn’t until the invention of the worldwide web when the world saw its next monumental change in how we receive information. Amid all these changes, one thing stayed the same: the dependence on visuals.

What I think has changed the most with images is our tolerance to their content. From pin-up girls to instagram baddies, we have grown more tolerant to sex in advertisements. Some brands have pushed it too far in their advertisements which results in being banned, but that creates a bit of buzz in itself, doesn’t it? And who is vanilla enough to not be intrigued by a banned advertisement? And it doesn’t have to be just about sex: look at that video produced by Sandy Hook Promise with the kids using their back-to-school essentials to escape a school shooter. Can you see Fox News playing that ad on their commercial space? The more provocative the image or video, the more we are curious and apt to talk about it to our friends/coworkers the next day. The idea of the Sandy Hook Promise video being played back in the 50s, let alone before or after Columbine, is incomprehensible. We have become a society that is more tolerant of shock value and controversy, whether or not we have a strong stance either way.

Maybe it’s my cynical side making yet another appearance on this blog, but I think because our attention spans are thinning and we are becoming weirdly intimate with our smartphones we will be seeing an increased dependence on image and video-based advertisements. It’s inevitable: we love the visual stimulation of a photo or video. It kills me to think that the TikTok ads I see on Snapchat work because they’re so moronic – but they work, especially with Gen Z. Young minds are susceptible to ads like TikTok’s because they are short, ‘funny’, ‘interesting’, etc. etc. Don’t get me wrong, it’s smart on TikTok’s part. They are making mad money. I really can’t dismiss that, but sometimes it makes me wonder if they’re contributing to the dumbing down of the world.

(And now I step off my soap box).