This month's Web Watch features AdCritic.com. This massive site offers a plentitude of full-length corporate and political advertisements. The site is primarily intended to serve as a medium for the advertising industry, enabling agencies to test TV advertising through online focus groups. AdCritic.com has plans to add sections where visitors can write in comments and opinions about particular ads. There is a weekly "Top 10" list of the most popular current ads as well as a "Top 100" list. The site's strength is its plethora of current and archived ads. Unfortunately, the video files may take anywhere from 5–15 minutes to download with slower Internet connections.

Teachers will find this site a valuable resource when searching for advertisments for their students to study and critique. For further teaching ideas, readers may want to access the July 2000 article by Rob Williams that discusses "bad ads" at http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=action/williams/index.html.

A word of caution: AdCritic.com contains ads that are not suitable for younger students and some of the ads may be offensive to viewers. It's a great resource, if used selectively!

For an index of New Literacies Web Watches, click here.

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted December 2000
© 2000 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232