er140610@ohio.edu
Every time I turn on the television and begin
flipping through the channels, I always end up pausing on what I initially
think to be a news program. After a few minutes of watching and listening, I begin to realize something is a little off. The colors are a little
too bright; the text is a little too big for the screen and…wait…
Is this woman trying to sell me something?
Is this woman trying to sell me something?
Yep! We’ve all seen them. Ads masquerading as news
programs, news articles, any type of news, really. What’s the name for it? Native advertising.
Granted, those on television are easier to pick out, but what about those that appear online? Not so much. Nowadays you can be reading an article on BuzzFeed
and read about three-fourths of it before realizing that although it might have some news
in it, it’s also sponsored by some outside company.
Take the example of the article run by The Atlantic about Scientology.
One of the big indicators for this one is the little
yellow rectangle that reads “SPONSORED CONTENT,” but how many of us really think
about that? I know I don’t. Many people thought this article was legitimate; it
wasn’t until later on that people started wondering why they felt a little
tricked.
This makes me think of this past summer, when I went
with my brother to see the new World War Z film. I’d read the book; he hadn’t.
I thought it might turn out to be a pretty decent movie.
A little ways in, I found myself really wanting a
Pepsi. Not a Sprite, not a Fanta, but very specifically a Pepsi. So I left my
brother in the theater for a minute so I could go get myself my large Pepsi and
some popcorn.
You’re probably wondering where this is going,
right? Well, I came back to Ohio University at the end of the summer and decided
to explore YouTube in my short break during RA orientation, when I came across a
video.
This video was an "honest trailer" about
World War Z, and it made me laugh at how horrible the movie actually was, until the end, when the makers of the YouTube video kindly pointed
something out for me.
A scene from World War Z. With Brad Pit. Drinking a
can of Pepsi…from an ALL-PEPSI MACHINE. Huh...
Now, let me get back to the point. Movies,
television stations, radio stations, news outlets, they’ve all got to get money
somewhere, right? You could try to argue that newspapers could get their money
from selling newspapers and movies get their money from selling tickets, but
there is a very little amount of people in our generation who read actual print
newspapers and movies are WAY more expensive than a lot of people realize. They
have to sell ad space to make enough money to give readers/viewers/listeners
valuable content, and if they need to be a little devious about it, then okay.
Writers, actors and radio hosts need their paychecks, and we smaller folk
need our various forms of news and entertainment.
World War Z might have been a poor movie,
but I got to watch it with my brother and laugh at the ridiculous zombie
clicking his teeth at Brad Pitt. And I enjoyed a nice cold Pepsi while I
was at it.
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