This thesis focuses on the type of language used in advertisements and publications for cell phones and its impact as a source of information for the consumer behavior. These publication instruments can actually be not understood by about 1/3 of the population, which is considered functional illiterate, but by others that don’t understand technical languages, jargons, and foreign terms. This fact can result in large financial losses and misapplication of the marketing communication tools. The research at issue was inspired by S-TOHFLA, which is an international test of functional health literacy of patients used in the health care setting. It measured the ability of the respondents to understand aspects and attributes used in press media advertisements about cell phones. Thereto, a test was inspired by the Cloze procedure which consists in fulfilling gaps with the most appropriate word, containing four multiple choice options for each question. That test was administrated to 202 respondents, and the answers contributed to assess their comprehension about the theme. The results point out that the respondents, according to their level of income, literacy, age and gender, have different levels of understanding the subject - for example, the higher the level of literacy of the respondent, the higher his or her score in the test. That reinforces the idea of reassess the clarity, intelligibility and the specificity of these promotional materials. Finally, this study stresses out the importance of messages and elements, used in advertisements, to become more sensitive to the literacy of different audiences and consequently, to be more effective in the advertising community. This study clarifies the latent need of changes for the marketing communication.