IELTS Writing Task 2: Advertisements (Opinion)

Advertisements are becoming more and more common in everyday life. Is it a positive or negative development?

Sample Answer

Advertisements could be found anywhere in our daily lives. In my opinion, the current prevalence of advertising is a positive development for companies and a negative development for customers.

On the one hand, advertisements are a powerful tool of competition for companies. Advertising stimulates demand, expands the scale of production and in turn reduces the cost of production per unit. This not only increases profit but also creates a competitive pricing advantage for companies of advertised products. In addition, since it pays to advertise, advertised products are usually of good, if not the best quality. In other words, a company would emphasize on improving the quality of products before advertising, which also helps to create a trustworthy brand image among customers.

However, advertising is so common that it now becomes useless and a nuisance to customers. First, customers are often bombarded with advertisements of the same product, making it increasingly challenging for them to believe the advertising message if all companies claim they provide the best service or quality products. As a result, buyers now often turn to their friends or acquaintances for recommendations, which renders advertising ineffective. In addition, due to constant repetition, people have now developed an aversion to advertisements and try to get rid of them as much as possible. For example, most viewable media platforms like YouTube or Netflix are now using the removal of advertisements as the unique selling points to attract new customers, implying the audience’s hostile attitude toward advertising.

In conclusion, I believe advertising could assist companies in generating profit and improving product quality. However, due to their prevalence, advertisements are becoming less effective as customers not only struggle to believe the advertising messages but also try to avoid them as much as possible.