Advertising's sneak: advertisers are going to new lengths to hook you--burying their messages in your games, on Web sites, even in your friends at school.

• Author: Vilbig, Peter
• Position: National - Cover Story

Sometimes ads aimed at teens actually look like ads. When Britney Spears shakes her booty on TV while drinking Pepsi, the message is clear: To be sexy, drink Pepsi. Other times the ads don't look like ads at all. You think you're playing a road-race game on the MSN Gaming Zone Web site, but look again: The car you're driving is a Dodge. The game is an ad.

Some advertisers go even further. Companies have begun paying carefully selected, trendsetter teens to wear clothing from their lines. And one New York marketing firm set up fake Web sites with deliberately lax security that allowed hackers to think they had broken into unedited scenes from upcoming movies. The result: The hackers sent the footage to dozens or even hundreds of friends, becoming an advertising vehicle for the movies without knowing it.

Advertisers are giddy about teens. The reason is simple: Teens are where the money is. American teens, defined by marketers as ages 12 through 19, number nearly 32 million--and teen spending hit $172 billion last year, says Teen Research Unlimited, a market research company. In an average week, 76 percent of teens go to the mall, usually spending more than four hours there.

AN INCREDIBLY HOT MARKET

American teens are the most ad-soaked generation in history. A typical teen is exposed to 20,000 ads per year on television alone. Some media experts fear the barrage of ads could turn today's teenagers into Generation Buy, defining themselves by what they own and wear, rather than who they are.

"Teens are an incredibly hot market," says Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education, a Washington-based media-awareness group. "And in a practical way, it creates so many opportunities for teens to be exploited. What happens--and this is what the marketers want--is that you get absorbed into this consumer culture where the difference between you and the brand becomes blurred."

But advertisers face a real problem getting the attention of teens amid a whirlwind of ads. The best ad must be clever, manipulative, or both. To promote its new Air Presto line of sneakers, Nike exhibited the sneakers at a trendy New York City art gallery for what it called "a celebration of form, function, and color." Next came ads on MTV, Fox, and UPN--all popular teen channels--and Internet ads on teen-favored sites like WWF, GameProWorld, ChickClick, and Ifuse. The colorful $85 shoes, with fanciful names like Unholy Cumulus and Brutal Honey, took off. Within months, 2 million pairs were sold.

Advertisers also like to play on teen desires to be in the know and have the latest exclusive gear. When Heelys...