Liu and Westmoreland observed that the most common words in advertisements are positive--new, good, soft, warm and free are the top five adjectives in female clothing advertisements. When it comes to advertisements that play off fears, however, the focus shifts to negative words instead. Liu and Westmoreland found the following:

- advertisements that portrayed a problem before it has been solved ("before" advertisements) use an average of 2.5 negative words per advertisement;
-advertisements that portrayed a problem after has been solved ("after" advertisements) use an average of 1 negative word per advertisement; and
-advertisements that portrayed a problem both before and after it has been solved ("before and after" advertisements use an average of 2.4 negative words per advertisement.

Case study II: Energy bar advertisements

The most common words in energy bar advertisements seem somewhat obvious: they include descriptions of the product category (energy, protein, carb and bar); acknowledgement of the consumer/reader (you and your) and generic yet positive words (make, high, delicious and will). There were 22 mentions of flavor-related words (like chocolate and almonds) and 94 total mentions of health-related words (calcium, nutrition, protein and whey, for example). Authors' note In the samples collected, it is easy to see that each energy bar company tends to fall into certain patterns (from layout to diction) when it creates its advertisements. Because the number of samples per energy bar company was not consistent, two sets of statistics are presented to the left--a blue bar represents the average number of times a word appears in an ad, weighting the data from each company by the number of ads provided; a purple bar uses the raw data without differentiating the numbers by company.

More surprising is the number of words per advertisement, which averaged out at almost 46 words per advertisement. The most common number of words per ad is in the range of 24-31 words. Based on these numbers, energy bar advertisements place one to two full sentences or almost two to five sentence fragments (usually one or two appear in an average ad) per energy bar advertisement. The advertisements use long copy to detail the health benefits of their products and to give the consumer details such as ingredients or flavors that help differentiate the company's product from its competitors.

Case study III: Alcohol advertisements

The top words in alcohol advertisements are not as product specific as the words of energy bar advertisements. You, good, one, enjoy, best and fine could be applied to any product; taste and drink can be placed in any food or beverage ad. Only smooth and distilled seem specialized.
The number of words in an alcohol advertisement averaged between 8 to 15 words, with the highest number of advertisements falling into the 12-14 word range. These advertisements need not be as descriptive or factual as energy bar advertisements; alcohol ads appeal to emotion and lifestyle, unlike the lists of supplemental vitamins and minerals included in energy bar ads.