What are the purposes of advertising?

[Bella]

Apart from encouraging people to buy things, what are the main purposes of advertising? I was also wondering whether advertising can have purposes *other* than selling goods or services -- you know those TV clips that Bristol Palin did for the Candie's Foundation about preventing teen pregnancy? Could those be considered a form of advertising?

[Mattie]

I think the purpose is to get their product known.

The definition of advertisement is "public promotion of some product or service". You can use advertising for other purposes such as on here, asking questions and advertising it get's it answered faster, the question would be your product, no? Or using facebook to get people to watch a new youtube video. And so on.

And yes I would consider that as an advertisement.