According to the www. encarta.msn.com, "Advertising is a form of commercial mass communication designed to promote
the sale of a product or service, or a message on behalf of an institution, organization, or candidate for political office. Most advertising is designed to promote the sale of a particular product or service. Some
advertisements, however, are intended to promote an idea or influence behavior, such as encouraging people not to use illegal drugs or smoke cigarettes."
In this like, advertisements are made to persuade the people or the target audience to buy the advertised product or to believe the advertised idea or ideas. And, since advertising and persuasion has somehow a relationship; therefore advertising can be incorporated to the Theory of Low Involvement by Herbert Krugman.
This is actually a communication theory which talks about the impact of advertising to the people with regards to people''s behavior and attitude change.
This theory has added an information about the techniques of persuasion, since the term persuasion is common in advertising world.
First technique is the appeals to humor, according to the authors Gelb and Pickett, 1983; Duncan and Nelson, 1985, that "humor is more effective in attracting attention, generating liking for the communicator, and so forth, than it is in producing attitude change or changes in behavior."
Second technique is the appeals to sex, which uses the sexy models and other sexual appeals as a technique to persuade target audience to buy the product.
Third is the effects of repetition which according to Severin and Tankard, 1992 that it talks about a particular advertisements, whether commercial or political---are repeated extensively. This technique has an advantage of letting the audience remember the source for a message from a high-credibility source.
However, this repetition technique can also have some disadvantages. One study found that repetition led to decreasing and increasing, counterarguing against the message by the recipient of the message. And they found that any amount of repetition led to increasing topic-irrelevant thinking (Cacioppo and Petty, 1979).
All in all, the persuasive aspect of advertsing must be taken as f great importance and consideration.