Frontline: The Merchants of Cool

Teenagers are one of the hottest targets of the ad industry. This PBS program looks at some of the companies that are most aggressively trying to sell their products to them. It's been estimated that the teen market is worth about $300 billion a year to those selling a wide variety of products, so competition is fierce when it comes to capturing the attention of young people on TV, the radio, and the Internet. Questions are posed regarding the role that advertisers may actually play in creating demand for products that teens might otherwise ignore. Teen marketing executives, a professor in communications, and other experts offer their views on how teens are spending their money.