Ethics and Advertising

Mackenzie Kane
mk931915@ohio.edu


With the rise of social media, there has also been a significant rise in advertisement fraud. Ad fraud affects not only the advertisers who are ultimately forced to pay for it, but also the consumer of media.

If you or your friend is online and sees an ad for a website that has had a lot of traffic, now it's not enough to look at the views or clicks a link has gotten, because that could be the doing of bots.

As consumers of media, we've all been harassed by countless ads when trying to get to a website or watch a video. But we don't realize the amount of ads we see daily that are hidden in plain sight. Product placement has become a large way for advertisers to reach media consumers in an effective and foolproof way.

A blogpost written in 2015 listed four pros of product placement:

• Revenue: It allows for film companies to pay for the content. By taking money from sponsors and featuring their product in a film or television show, they're able to make the best content for their audience while also allowing for subtle (or not-so-subtle) advertising.
• Viewing experience: When product placement is done well, it puts an idea of the product in question into the viewers head and could result in them purchasing the product next time the opportunity arises. Although if it is not done well, viewers could experience an awkward mini-commercial while trying to enjoy a film.
• Increases profit margin: The amount of money used to create a film or television show is greatly reduced with product placement. However much money a company spends on product placement comes out of the price it took to film the movie, and the company only needs to make the difference at the box office to break even. The more money spent on product placement, the less money the film will have to bring in once it is released to theaters. 
• Awareness: If a moviegoer leaves a movie they have just seen happily, they are more likely to associate the products they saw in that movie in a more positive way.

Video courtesy Youtube

Product placement is one of the few ways advertisers know where their money is going. In a graphic posted on A Medium Corporation, it was said that 75% of clicks on 300x600 ad units are fraudulent. As an advertiser, why would you risk spending money on ad traffic when you know that you will end up paying a high price for false numbers? 

As a regular consumer of many media, I personally am a fan of the earned media approach to advertising. I would much rather see products in films and tv shows than having to sit through a 30-60 second ad about something the robot in my computer thinks I would like.