Manipulative Advertising

by Steve Cuno
February 17, 2026

This episode was sponsored by Skeptoid board member Stephen Hacker

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Today we’re going to lay bare the secret world of advertising, along with its nefarious ways of undermining society, which, before you know it, will subvert your conscious will and cause you to empty your wallet for products you don’t even want.

But then, this is Skeptoid. So if you suspect that a big HOWEVER might be waiting in the wings, well, your suspicions are correct. You are under no obligation to like or even respect advertising. But if you’re going to dislike it, or dislike this retired ad man for having made his living in it for 48 years, this episode will help you dislike advertising — and me — from a more informed perspective.

Advertising consists of creating a message and paying for it to appear in various media, such as the Internet, TV and radio, print publications, mail, billboards, posters in restroom stalls, cereal boxes, podcasts (including Skeptoid for non premium members), and more. It is a subset of marketing, a term the industry prefers because many people feel its synonym, selling, is a dirty word. Other disciplines under the marketing umbrella include public relations, research, package design, branding, distribution, product placement, personal selling, retail stores, door-to-door selling, home parties, and more. There is, of course, more to it, and sometimes the lines blur, but I’m trying to keep this brief.

One more note before we proceed: I’m not here to defend advertising. I’m here to examine claims. To be sure, there are advertising abuses that deserve condemnation. I’ll get to them.

Claim: Advertising makes people buy against their will

This is a myth. For one thing, hypnotism has never been demonstrated to manipulate anyone into acting against their will. (See Skeptoid Podcast Episode 330.) For another, hypnotism requires focus. Consider your environment when you are exposed to an advertisement: phones, Candy Crush, trips to the fridge or bathroom, talkative roommates or family members, and more are not conducive to being placed in a trance. And for yet another, the next time you go shopping, visit the clearance aisles. Clearance items are severely discounted because too few people wanted them. If advertisers can hypnotize us into buying, they’re not doing a very good job of it.

Related claim: Subliminal advertising is a thing

This, too, is a myth, and it’s a pervasive one. No doubt you have heard of the infamous experiment in which Coca-Cola and popcorn sales rose when a theater flashed subliminal messages at an unsuspecting movie audience. Books and articles warning of the dangers of subliminal advertising followed. What few people know is that the “experimenter” later admitted to having made the whole thing up to promote his research firm. In fact, subliminal messaging has never been shown to make anyone buy anything. (See Skeptoid Podcast Episode 63.)

Claim: Advertising pushes unneeded products

This one is sometimes true. Post-It® brand notes and iPad are examples of products no one knew they wanted until marketers pushed them. But more often, marketers play catch-up to trends. Fidget Spinner, LABUBU, and pink for girls and blue for boys are all examples of trends that emerged organically, followed by advertisers hurrying to capitalize on them.

Claim: Advertising is bad art

It depends. A lot of advertising is schlock, but quite a bit of it is artful. Consider your favorite Super Bowl spots, or browse the entries in an advertising awards competition like The One Show or the CLIOS. You’ll see some pretty artful stuff. Either way, it’s moot. Advertising’s job isn’t to be art. That’s art’s job. Advertising’s job is to sell or persuade.

Claim: Advertising drives up costs

This one is a myth, but it’s a tricky one, for the price of an item indeed pays for its advertising. It also pays for all other operating costs, such as payroll, real estate, insurance, materials, production, taxes, shareholder dividends, et cetera. In any case, no company raises prices in order to advertise, and — despite retailers who claim to have lower prices because they don’t advertise — no company that ceases advertising lowers prices as a result. If it did, you’d barely see a difference, because the cost of advertising per product sold tends to be negligible. And sometimes advertising lowers prices through increased sales, which produce economies of scale.

Claim: If a product is good, you shouldn’t have to sell it

This is the old “build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” trope, commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Had Emerson been a marketer or invented a mousetrap, he might have known better. There have been plenty of better mousetraps, yet the old, gory head-smasher prevails. In the real world, “better” products fail every day. Moreover, it’s interesting when a society that values trade condemns selling. You don’t get trade without buying, and you don’t get buying without selling.

Claim: Advertising does no good

Advertising can certainly do harm, but you might be surprised at the good it does. It helps keep economies going. It holds down the prices of magazines, newspapers, streaming services, and podcasts — including Skeptoid — which subscription prices alone do not cover. As noted earlier, it can create mass markets resulting in economies of scale and, as a result, lower prices. And a number of products that many of us appreciate — like toothpaste, dental floss, deodorant, insect repellant, smartphones, vaccines, and, for me anyway, pizza — owe their initial market success to advertising.

Claim: Advertising influences people

True enough. To influence is advertising’s job. That’s also the job of people in stores handing out food samples, cosmetics departments doing complimentary makeovers, automotive shops plugging flat tires for free, the person in a burger shop asking if you’d like fries with that, Brian Dunning asking you to support Skeptoid, and, frankly, anyone trying to interest you in a product, service, or idea. But influences is a far cry from controls. Whether you’re online or standing at the cosmetics counter, to buy not to buy — apologies to Hamlet — remains your decision.

Claim: The more creative the advertising, the more it sells

This one has a whiff of the No True Scotsman Fallacy about it, especially when you add its equally prevalent escape clause, if it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative. Thus champions of creativity have it both ways.

In fact, many campaigns celebrated as highly creative, like, say, the Taco Bell chihuahua, drove sales down. And many ads that the industry disdains as woefully uncreative — like, say, Ginsu Knife or Snuggie — made some people very, very rich.

Claim: A successful advertisement is one that creates awareness, is noticed, and is remembered

If your advertising objective is to create awareness, be noticed, or be remembered, then, sure, a successful ad is one that does those things. But awareness, notice, or remembrance is small consolation when an expensive campaign falls flat — which happens all the time. You may have noticed that not too many people drive a Ford Edsel, polish their shoes with Shinola, or guzzle New Coke — all brands that attained top-of-mind awareness back in the day and maintain it even now.

Claim: Advertisers use data to spy on you

If you wonder how an advertiser knows you like classic rock and collectible comic books, chances are your browsing, online purchasing, and streaming history played a part. But there’s no need to panic. Voyeurism is not the reason advertisers gather data. Advertisers are looking for group proclivities; no one is spying on you as an individual. (There are a couple of caveats to that, which I’ll get to in a moment.) Advertisers gather data to increase their odds of reaching swaths of people who may be interested in their product. It costs money to place advertisements. The better advertisers can fine-tune their audience, the better their chance of not wasting money on people with no interest in them. If you operate a vegan restaurant, a database of people who prefer going meatless can help you avoid wasting money reaching out to ardent carnivores. If you sell tires, a database of automobile owners can help you avoid reaching people who don’t drive. This kind of fine — tuning can benefit consumers, too. If you’re looking for a vegan restaurant or a deal on tires, you may be glad the message reached you. The system is far from perfect. When a totally irrelevant message reaches you, someone’s data is off, or someone didn’t bother with data at all.

Now, the caveats. There ARE bad actors out there who will abuse your data. While it’s technically possible that some perv out there working with an otherwise legit database could zero in on you, the real threat is from scammers and hackers, many of whom are expert at using data to identify targets. Always take steps to ensure you’re dealing with a legitimate, reputable marketer, change your passwords often, and monitor your bank statements often and carefully.

Claim: Marketing ploys are devious

It depends on the marketing ploy. Weasels, omissions, half-truths, and deception are indeed devious. I’ll return to those momentarily. But lower prices, better lighting, wider aisles, courteous service, promptly answered phones, clearance sales, and two-for-the-price-of-one are also marketing ploys. You are welcome to call them devious if you wish, but some of us like and even benefit from them. I am the “victim” of a marketing ploy launched by a nearby coffee house. The ploy? The devious fiends in that coffee house hand out dog treats at the drive-up window. I usually have my dogs with me in the car, so the place has become my coffee house of choice. The coldhearted curmudgeons at the nearest competing coffee house, who resort to no such ploy, have lost my business. Justly so, say I.

I apologize if I didn’t get to your pet advertising peeve; but I have to wrap this up or we’ll be here all day. Now I’d like to cut to some of my pet peeves, namely, advertising abuses that deserve condemnation.

Harmful stereotypes

Advertising has come a long way, but I still have to remind clients and creative people not to assume that all professionals are male and white, not to imply that the typical woman spends her day thinking about how to please a man, and not even to hint at making light of or stereotyping marginalized populations. These things cause and perpetuate harm.

Advertising that lies or misleads

I’m not talking about puffery — I’m not terribly concerned about people who buy cookies because they believe in Keebler elves or drink Red Bull because they believe they’ll take flight. I’m concerned about outright misleading claims. Specifically, I’m referring to various forms of weaseling, and to out-and-out lying.

Weaseling refers to using words or phrases that create an impression but stop short of a specific claim in order to remain technically legal. For instance, a one percent discount qualifies as “up to half off,” you can pretty much call anything a “clinical study,” and you can get away with calling just about anyone an “expert.”

As I write, an interesting class action is afoot involving the McDonald’s McRib® sandwich. The suit claims that “despite its name and distinctive rib-like shape, [the McRib sandwich] does not actually contain any actual pork rib meat.” McDonald’s has replied that the meat is “100% pork.” I’ll leave it to you — and the court — to decide if “100% pork” as opposed to “100% pork rib” is a weasel; and whether calling the sandwich “McRib” and shaping the patty to look like ribs is deceptive, if, as the suit alleges, it contains no rib meat. What is not subject to debate is that the sandwich tastes really, really good.

Industries that take weaseling to the max include so-called alternative medicines, natural and organic products, diet plans, multilevel marketing companies, and get-rich-quick schemes. Their promotions and labels are rife with words like “supports,” “helps,” “financial success,” and “virtually,” all terms that say nothing but imply much. To be clear, as long as they carry the proper disclaimers, they’re not breaking the law. But when large type implies benefits that small type disclaims, I think it’s fair to say that the large type misleads. Especially when you consider that most people don’t bother reading the small type, which for some odd reason often fails to be particularly readable in terms of style.

Even worse are advertisers who out-and-out lie. How do they get away with it? They may operate from a country that won’t prosecute them. They may count on regulatory bodies to be slow to action. They may count on profits to be greater than fines. They may keep operations local, knowing that the Federal Trade Commission pursues only interstate cases. They may hide behind corporate shields. They may hide their identity and close or move before the law catches up.

What can you do? Remain ever vigilant, report abuses, write to editors, and maybe even, where appropriate, mount a class action. And, of course, don’t buy from companies that mislead.

Equally important is to reward responsible marketers and advertisers with your business.

In the meantime, as the Skeptoid mantra goes, it’s important to remain skeptical.

By Steve Cuno