Ads, Ads, and more Ads

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 In my personal experience with ads and social media, I do feel a bit conflicted. While I do understand that for some things to be "free" they must have some form of revenue to keep them running, I also do feel as though we are getting more and more baraged by advertisements on a daily basis. In the column for supporting ads, I think that things such as a creator's right to be able to make additional money off of ad revenue, a platform getting support that they may not otherwise get by promoting interesting materials, or even just companies feeling the need to show us a product we may not otherwise know about are all completely valid things. However, as with most things that have ever been created, I think that advertising can fall into the column against them. Some of these are because ads have been corrupted in my eyes past their intended use. Things such as platforms stripping creators of their rights to collect ad revenue if they don't like what their content is, inappropriate or often false advertising on websites that those ads should absolutely not be on, or bombarding people with ads to the point where they cannot even enjoy paid content.

here are a few things that I think are fantastic examples of advertising gone astray:

1. You have to pay an additional amount on some streaming platforms to have them be ad-free even if you already have paid for the content

2. Pop-up ads and video ads that play over content to the point where you can't really access important info or it lags the page (I'm looking at you weather channel) 

3. Inappropriate ads on children's, or general public websites (I feel as though this has gotten slightly better than when I was a kid, but I've seen a recent resurgence)

There of course have been some good things that have come from advertising though as of recent. Ive found a lot of great products on tik tok or interest that applied to me and led me to buy the item. these were presented to me in a way where I was able to take notice and decide if I was interested or not without having it be shoved in my face and causing me to be resentful. I've also found out about some amazing local events because of advertising too.  

Here are a few great articles and research papers I've found on ads that I think would be perfect to share!

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/technology/bad-digital-ads.html

https://www.marketingweek.com/fake-ads-are-on-the-rise-good-or-bad-brands-need-to-call-it-out/

https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-729163



  Brown, Jones, V. K., & Wang, M. (Eds.). (2016). The new advertising : branding, content, and consumer relationships in the data-driven social media era. Praeger.


  Impact of Large-Scale Social Media Advertising Campaigns on COVID-19 Vaccination. (2022). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Comments

  1. Ellen DooleySeptember 19, 2023 at 4:32 PM


    Thanks for the articles & thoughts, Jourdan. While some good and useful information does come in the form of ads, you made a valid case for all the advertising flying at consumers being a bit too much and, in the case of your point #3 regarding children, potentially harmful. I haven’t been on the platform, but it’s easy to find extensive coverage on the fact that many of their ads are fake: Google search And of course, children’s information being available on the platform is one more potential money-maker if that information is sold. The “Inside the World of Big Tech” news roundup embedded in the NYTImes article you posted has a link to a September 15, 2023 article about an EU fine against TikTok for weak safeguards to protect children’s personal information:
    • TikTok: TikTok was fined roughly $370 million by E.U. regulators
    While the number of ads may have declined in some statistical way, it continues to be annoying to try to get to the bottom of CNN’s main news page without all sorts of bizarre content, linked to fake journalistic entities that are liked to ads, popping up. It would be interesting to know how much revenue those “ads” bring in, especially because most of us know to scroll down through them.
    As for streaming platforms, is seems like there is still so much shifting going on in that realm. Netflix and Disney recently announced that they’ll run ads, but perhaps the subscription rate will go down. It will be interesting to see where some of it lands, and of course the writers and actors’ strikes will necessitate some of those platforms changing yet again.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hollywood-strikes-put-pressure-on-streaming-companies-the-stakes-are-high-185634033.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ramona CorletteSeptember 19, 2023 at 7:27 PM

    Jourdan, some of these advertisements are WAY too inappropriate for children. They are sexual, or just plain disgusting. There are advertisements that I have been trying to get away from where the goal of the game is to pull bugs and bodily fluids out of a cartoon foot or ear. I know some people like Dr. Pimple Popper, but I am not one of those people. I wish I could scrub the memory from my mind. I would at least like to opt out, but I think this one of the failings of social media ads. The feature to prevent seeing a certain type of ad does not work, or it does not work well.

    ReplyDelete

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