Many people fear that advertising is creeping more and more into our everyday lives.  It is everywhere: on the carts in supermarkets, in product placements in movies, and disguised as e-mail messages.

Sometimes people have conversations as if they were in commercials -- conversations that last only 30 seconds and are filled with descriptions about products and superlatives.  But is advertising really ruining our lives, especially now that consumption has suddenly become a dirty word?

Not completely.   Advertising and much of consumer marketing can have a positive social value. I think this is most true for one kind of advertising, viral video advertising.  For those people who haven’t seen a viral video, or did not know when they had seen one, viral videos are a form of advertising in which the commercial message is subtlety present, without people being aware of it.  They are usually somewhat long, even approaching the length of infomercials, which can be a plague especially if you are not in need of bodybuilding, a wok or a Japanese knife that cuts bone and paper. 

For the most part, viral videos don’t look or sound like advertising.  Most of the time, viral videos contain educational information, and at the end, there is a commercial message, usually leading viewers in a direction that is projected to be good for them. The “general direction” is usually toward the product or service of the advertiser.

To a degree, viral videos contain hidden advertising messages and are a bit sneaky.  However, the core of viral advertising usually contains valuable information -- information which you can act on.  The viral advertisement is probably the most potent form of education invented for TV or even the web.

But what about the hidden or subtle product advertising buried in those commercials?  Well, I think that the American public has become smart and calculating viewers.  They can quickly detect the sell and decide if it is worthwhile for them to continue watching the video.  However, before they reach the hard selling messages, they will have been exposed to a lot of good, non-selling information.

In fact, viral video advertising has the potential for being the easiest, most approachable sort of education around. Although you will not receive a diploma for learning from viral advertising, you may gain valuable information about a product or service. Watch and learn.

Arthur J. Kover, Ph.D., is a Management Fellow at Yale University School of Management, and former editor, Journal of Advertising Research.