What is this money used for? That depends on the gender of the character.

One harmful message mobile game ads perpetuate is the idea that a woman can’t be happy or desirable unless she looks like a beauty star or she makes enough money. This practice is not at all limited to mobile game advertisements, but it is prevalent in almost every single mobile game advertisement. Shockvertising is when commercials purposefully use shocking, violent, disturbing, sometimes sexual, and provocative imagery to gain attention. This juxtaposition of cute and melodramatic creates a shocking display of sensational images designed to get people to download the game, a practice known as “shockvertising.” This type of content is juxtaposed with the friendly-looking cartoon characters on screen, who often get hurt or presumably killed if the player fails to save them from some ludicrously over-the-top danger. Many mobile game ads are infamously known for their overtly violent and sexual content. I want to discuss those messages in this article, as well as the harm they can cause. While those are indeed elements worth discussing, I believe certain elements of these advertisements, such as the harmful messages they inadvertently send, are often overlooked. The conversation becomes more focused on how weird or wacky the ads are, and how that weird nature gets people to download the games they advertise. I am by no means the first person to write an article about mobile game advertisements, but I have noticed a pattern of how mobile game ads are discussed. Typically, the ads come in between levels–levels which strongly encourage players to manually view ads about other games to gain rewards that will help them make progress in other games.

They even pop up inside other mobile games. Mobile game advertisements are everywhere, from unskippable commercials on Youtube to seemingly unavoidable pop-up ads they are seemingly inescapable. Nowhere is this more apparent than mobile game ads. They have been around since the invention of advertising itself and, thanks to new technology, have evolved to invade every part of the internet. False advertisements, or the act of using purposefully or unintentionally misleading advertisements to sell a product, are nothing new.

Actual game like the homescapes ad