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Effectively Embedded: The Thirteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends: 2009-2010

Embedded advertising, in the forms of product placement and consumer events, is not new, but it has become the dominant advertising medium in 2010 and continues to expand. Advertising done in a school context is, by definition, "embedded." And although children, like adults, tend to believe that advertising does not affect them, research demonstrates that it does. Moreover, the authors believe the available evidence strongly suggests that when schools participate in marketing programs, students are exposed to psychological harm. This report examines both the persuasion processes by which embedded advertising in schools influences children and the varieties of psychological harm it causes.