Advertising in Today's World

Hannah Schie
hs538514@ohio.edu


New Media

Many companies now engage in earned media and native advertising. Earned media is media that is free and the result of interaction between the company and the consumers. That being said, it is much more difficult to earn attention for your company through earned media than your average paid advertisement. Social media, unsurprisingly, is the place where a lot of this earned media is coming from and taking place.

Native advertising has also been on the rise for the past few years. According to the website Sharethrough, native advertising is "a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed." Sharethrough's website gets into specifics on how consumers react to native advertising on different platforms and viewing habits. Although it is paid advertising, native advertising may be just as effective as the earned media that is free.

I encounter native advertising on Twitter and Instagram very frequently, and I do find that I spend more time looking at the content that is integrated than I would if a random banner popped up at the top of the feed. Personally, I don't think I prefer either earned media over native advertising or native advertising over earned media, even though I tend to trust earned media more. In this sense, my personal thoughts on native advertising are positive.

Credit to RS Web Solutions

Negatives of Advertising

Fraudulent advertising continues to be on the rise as technology advances and as the social media world continues to grow. There are four types of advertising fraud: Bot traffic, ad insertion, robot retargeting and CMS hacking.

Although the fraud is bad, companies do benefit from the boost in web traffic and website performance. Since the fraudulent advertising is in some ways helpful, it is a dilemma for many brands as to whether or not they should take action against these hackers and robots.

False advertising has become harder and harder to accomplish over the past decade, but many companies still participate in smaller ways. With the rise of social media platforms, a company caught lying to their consumers about their product and its effects can be spread around in a matter of minutes or hours. Advertising companies balance how much information they need to tell their consumers ethically with the full truth.

Subliminal Advertising

Most people come into contact with subliminal advertising each and every day, whether or not we know it. We, the consumers, have been tricked into thinking we need many material items from specific brands and companies.

Many brands now know that they have loyal customers, many who will pay almost any cost for their products. In reality, many brands sell almost the exact same products and just print their own brand name onto it and change the price. Nike and Target could sell almost the same pair of shoes and Nike's pair would cost at least twice as much.

Personally, there are a few brands, like Nike and Adidas that I know I will pay a few extra dollars for, due to their product quality, but I'm sure I've also been affected by subliminal advertising from these brands without even realizing.