Purpose:

Students will gain awareness of how advertisements are targeted to demographics and how they, as consumers, are influenced by advertising.
This lesson has a data management connection (graphing).

Time:

2 class periods, about 90 minutes

Materials:

• Copies of newspapers
• Language notebooks or media journals
• Tally sheet (blackline master provided)
• Chart paper for graphs.

The Lesson:

1. Distribute copies of a newspaper. You will need enough newspapers to allow students to work in pairs.
2. Hand out the tally sheet. Ask students to take a tally of the ads appearing in a newspaper section. For each advertisement, they must interpret the type of ad, the intended audience and list key factors that define the ad.
3. When the tally sheet is complete, graph the results.
4. Have students work in groups of four to analyze their data. They should be looking for trends that address demographics (age and gender), looking at the issue of gender and why an advertiser might create an ad for males that is different for ads aimed at females.
5. In whole class, have each group present their data. Write the conclusions on the board.
6. To wrap up the issue of target marketing in advertising, ask students to write in their notebooks how the ads communicated to their target and whether they were effective.

Evaluation:

In their journal entries, students should demonstrate an understanding of how advertisers target ads to specific ages and gender.

Advertising Tally Sheet

back to top

Samples

back to top