I have an MBA with a concentration in marketing, so I will give you my best shot!

Marketing is the study of markets. So, marketers learn about and identify the people who buy certain products, people who live in certain areas, people who travel to certain places at certain times of the year and so on. Marketers know WHO the customer is of the product to be sold.

Advertising is simply the promotion of that product TO that target market through the use of tv, radio, direct-mail, etc.

Pretty cut and dry right?

Not sure of pros and cons. They are two different beasts that most people mistake as one. Marketing I would say is more along the research end of things while advertising is more on the creative side. Marketing is more statistically supported, while advertising can change more rapidly.

It would just depend on your personality and what you found more exciting as a field of work.

Advertising is a specialist subset of marketing. It takes in print, audio and video. and images.

The Marketing mix consists of Product, Price, Promotion and Place.These four elements are the tools of marketing. it is the planning and targeting of these tools to a specific group of people that constitutes your marketing plan.

You can see then that the marketing department has to find the message, images, media types that will be used bt the target market. I would recommend you have a look at a textbook on basic marketing as it will help you to see there are many different career paths within the field of Marketing