Seventeen also carried a 20-page advertising section for Maybelline that imitated a fashion and beauty magazine, complete with its own cover and table of contents. Several magazines associated with kids' clubs or toys are loaded with advertorials. Nintendo Power magazine has been described as a full-length advertorial, with promotions for all of Nintendo's products. Media critic Mark Crispin Miller expressed concern about the saturation of our environment with hidden advertising. Particularly in the case of children, such hidden advertising has great potential to mislead and deceive.
Advertising invites skepticism.
When others urge us to do what they want, one is alerted to the possibility that their wishes may not be in our best interest. But product placements and advertorials disarm children and keep their defenses down. Use of such techniques to advertise to kids demonstrates a failure of marketers to play fair, and a failure of self-monitoring by the media as a way of protecting kids from undue pressures to buy. As such, it invites regulation.