Week 8

For some reason, last week’s battery of readings led me to believe that native advertising was an acceptable alternative to garish pop up ads, trick banners and floating ads.  After all, advertising - online and in print - isn’t going anywhere.  Ever.  Having done some research on both native and flashy ads in support of this week’s readings, I’m not so sure my admiration of native ads is going to last long. 

Here lies the evil of online ads in general, according a December 2013 New York Times piece: 

          "Unlike advertisements in magazines or on television, online ads let a company

          know when a consumer downloads a coupon, posts a product review or goes to

          a shopping site and buys its product."

While native ads don’t suck up as much bandwidth, and aren’t as distracting, they have an evil nature all their own.  Native ads are sneaky.  And they aren’t any less invasive of users’ privacy.  I feel like they prey on people’s naiveté and short attention spans.  And, as seen in the following examples, they can be almost subliminal:  http://www.copyblogger.com/examples-of-native-ads/  According to the article, they are “done well.”  And I have to agree, particularly in The Onion example.  

 

This article shows some more that don’t suck:  http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/native-advertising-examples

The best commentary about native ads that I stumbled upon came from HBO’s Jon Oliver of Last Week Tonight:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc

Even South Park is leaning into the fray with this week’s episode, addressing the evils of advertising - native ads in particular.  According to AdAge.com, "Content has become commerce. We have reached a perfect storm; the democratization of news providers and publishers, the record increase of ad avoidance, and the insatiable appetite for targeted content ads are working. People are clicking on native ads. Publishers are getting traffic. Companies are getting messages to their audiences.”  South Park has a history of mimicking the current social commentary, and their attention to the subject is a clear indication of how prevalent and detested it is.

I had to look up the word “advertorial,” although the meaning should have been self-evident.  Even its most basic definition seemed shifty: advertorials are deliberately crafted to fool people into thinking they are editorials.  My basic search of “disadvantages of advertorials” yielded nothing except tips on how to produce better advertorial for the first three results pages, at which point I got extremely bored and gave up.

A study by Professor David Franklyn at the University of San Francisco determined that only 35% of respondents were able to identify an advertisement, even when it was labeled as such.  Knowing that so many consumers are unable to differentiate between true content and advertisements, shouldn’t there be even more stringent rules governing their use?  I was glad to see that any regulations at all, they really don’t seem to be strict enough.  For example, "Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”  Bearing that in mind, how can they exist at all?  It’s also worth noting that the FTC will prosecute the creators of the advertisement, rather than the company being promoted or the site itself, which seems fair at first glance.  While I agree that the company shouldn’t be penalized, I think the site running the ad should share the culpability.  They need to be aware of violations on their pages.

Buzzfeed used to be my guilty pleasure.  I thought it was a fun, relevant representation of viral stories. I never noticed that some of the stories were sponsored.  Seriously.  “9 Tips for Quick Cleaning” seemed useful.  Somehow, discovering that the piece was sponsored by Swiffer took the fun - and certainly the perception of objectivity - away.  I was one of those aforementioned naive, short attention span readers/consumers.  At a minimum, our readings have increased my awareness and made me look harder.  It seems there should be a required Internet 101 course that comes with your DLS/cable connection.   

Modern advertising is creepy. And, I think, is a clear violation of our privacy. Culling our browsing history online is just one aspect.  With Facebook now providing our geographical information to brick and mortar stores wiling to pay for the data, “creepy” takes on an entirely new dimension.  Now we’re being stalked online and on the street.  I can’t think of a better deterrent for NOT using Facebook!  I acknowledge that people who provide online services and content need to turn a profit in order to function and provide relevant content; however, the business model needs to change.  

We - as consumers of online content even have our own “buckets,” some of which are shown below:

Experian.com. (2015). Retrieved February 28, 2016, from http://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/brochures/mosaic-brochure-october-2014.pdf.

These pithy, alliterative titles annoy me.  I refuse to even figure out which one(s) I belong to. At the very least, this whole concept makes me want to just search “dolphins” or “industrial plumbing” or "Peruvian antiquities” just to throw off their data.