Entertainment Value of Advertisements

Entertainment is basically an event or activity which helps an audience relax or feel good, temporarily being absorbed into the entertaining element. Entertainment value therefore defines as how much entertainment a piece of material can provide to an audience. This is an element that is crucial in creating a good advertisement because once people feel entertained, they will be naturally drawn towards that particular advertisement.

Most of the time, though, we do not associate entertainment with advertisements. For example, when a television programme is being aired and a commercial break interrupts it, most of us feel that as a break, it is an interruption to the real entertainment that is the television programme. The commercial break is sometimes also used as a ploy by the production team of television programmes to pause a show and create suspense that would add to the entertainment value of only the programme itself. Thus, the entertainment value of an advertisement is mostly due to internal factors, such as the methods used to bring across a certain point or portray a certain product, the effectiveness of the various elements that make up an advertisement - colour, sound, words, pictures and movement.

So how does one tell when an advertisement is entertaining? An advertisement is effective when it helps the viewers understand and most importantly remember the underlying message. It is something that can be achieved through many methods. An entertaining advertisement is one whereby an effective advertisement is the result. This is because an entertaining advertisement is one that engages the viewer, one that can create laughter, involve emotions, relate to certain ideas or issues that are familiar to the viewer, or allows the viewer a few moments of enjoying himself or herself without reminding the viewer of the purpose of the advertisement in the process. Once an advertisement has entertainment value, it is effective in making the audience remember it as something that made him or her feel good or relax.

Entertainment can be found in all media of advertising, but more so in television and the Internet than in radio and print. This is due to the fact that radio and print appeal to fewer sensory devices than the television and the Internet and is more restricted in creativity with less movement and changes that gives space for innovation.

The entertainment value of an advertisement is more pertinent in modern society as its presence is more expected and taken as a given. This is because entertainment and pleasure is much more important in our lives and affording it is no longer a problem. Technological advances have once again allowed for better and more effective methods for creating and conveying advertisements and conveying messages behind them. Nowadays, we expect our advertisements to be interesting and innovative, no longer those in the past that only lists the product's qualities. To appeal to audiences, advertisements need to meet that expectation and at the most fundamental level contain that entertainment value.