The content and critical metaphor analysis of illustrated print advertisements in China.

This dissertation takes Chinese advertisements as the research subjects to see in what way a quantifiable large number of advertisements with its metaphorical nature and instrumental mission can reflect social cultural change, in specifics, ideology and identity change of China in the last thirty years by combining four methods of research: content analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Pictorial Metaphor Analysis. The dissertation goes through the sign or ad interpretation process of linguistic, semiotic and critical analysis of 300 sample illustrated print advertisements collected from popular and award-winning illustrated print advertisements in Chinese media in the three periods of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s respectively. After comparing and contrasting the high frequency key words, advertising appeals and metaphorical expressions and images (categories and groups) appeared in the advertisements of the three periods the following conclusions are made: First, although advertisements in all the three periods belonged to the commercial public discourse, those in 1980s were inclined towards public discourse without much consideration for specific target groups while those in 1990s and 2000s tended to denote private and personal discourse with clear target groups in mind. While the advertisements in 1980s were characterized largely by the direct informative style, the majority of the advertisements in 1990s manifested a hybridization of both informative and involving styles. The advertisements in 2000s demonstrated strong involving and interacting style. Second, it can be seen from the shift of advertising appeals from the use of rational appeal to personal appeal that the overall society is moving up the ladder of Maslow\u27s Hierarchy of Needs Analysis from the basic need satisfaction to more social need and personal need satisfaction. Third, with regard to semiotic image categories used, the result shows the tendency that China is increasingly becoming a male-dominated society with a big increase in using male images from 1980s to 2000s and in particular adult male images. The representational images in the ads show a decline in intimacy but an increase in positional communication. The social setting is the dominant advertising background for all the three periods. Meanwhile with regard to the typical types of metaphorical images that are used as signifieds or secondary subjects to be projected onto the signifiers or primary subjects, there is a decline in using human images as opposed to non-human images. The dominant metaphorical image types used in three periods are in concomitant with the ideology and identity needs of each specific period of time. Fourth, on the whole the critical metaphor analysis of 300 sample illustrated print advertisements in mainland China from 1979 to 2008 has revealed advertisements during this period, implicitly or explicitly, have served the evolving ruling and dominant ideology very well. The dominant ideologies have changed from political ideology to economic ideology in 1980s, from economic ideology to national ideology in 1 990s, and from national ideology to balanced harmonious ideologies in 2000s. The individual consumers have transformed their identities from political self to material social self in 1980s, from material social self to national cultural self in 1990s, and from national cultural self to a individualized myself in 2000s. The dissertation contributes both theoretically and practically to the advertising research as well as visual culture research. On the one hand it confirms the critical discourse theory that discourse change can reflect socially-constructed reality. On the other hand, it contributes to pictorial metaphor theory by that visual metaphors are deep-rooted in human conceptualization and are cultural-specific

Advertising Progress

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleOriginally published in 1998. Drawing on both documentary and pictorial evidence, Pamela Walker Laird explores the modernization of American advertising to 1920. She links its rise and transformation to changes that affected American society and business alike, including the rise of professional specialization and the communications revolution that new technologies made possible. Laird finds a fundamental shift in the kinds of people who created advertisements and their relationships to the firms that advertised. Advertising evolved from the work of informing customers (telling people what manufacturers had to sell) to creating consumers (persuading people that they needed to buy). Through this story, Laird shows how and why—in the intense competitions for both markets and cultural authority—the creators of advertisements laid claim to "progress" and used it to legitimate their places in American business and culture

Lightweight adaptive personalised e-advertising

Adaptation and personalisation is aimed at improving the user experience in e-systems. Personalisation was initially applied in the fields of distance learning and web-based educational systems. Adaptation can be also used in e-advertising, to increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat visits to websites. Several models/frameworks have been designed for adaptation, for instance AHAM, LAOS, AdRosa, and MyAds. Many systems have been developed based on these frameworks. Most previous models/frameworks were primarily designed for personalised educational experience and were aimed at standalone systems, which cannot be (easily) integrated into existing websites in a lightweight manner. In addition, some of them are used in the portal model of advertising, since they match the interests of the publisher and the advertiser. The aim of this work is to overcome the limitations and weaknesses of these models and systems to deliver adaptive advertising. This work firstly attempts to support and facilitate the integration between adaptive systems and business websites. It also introduces a method to control and adapt advertisements located and owned by businesses. This thesis further proposes a generalised model, the Layered Adaptive Advertising Integration (LAAI), as the starting point for the development of an adaptive advertisement system. In a second stage, it presents a study that assesses the effectiveness of a system (AEADS) based on this model, via a trial run of a model prototype with users (both customers and business owners). In a third stage, social networks are used as inputs for the user model of customers, to enhance the efficiency of acquiring user information, as an addition to the user registration process. Furthermore, social interactions, such as the facility to use “like”, are added to the user model, and the delivery process has the ability to apply actions based on this data. Finally, an evaluation of the whole system proposed is conducted, with business owners and Internet users alike