Transparency in Advertising

Reed Hillen
Rh972116@ohio.edu

Transparency in advertising is an issue in modern day journalism as the lines continue to blur between advertising and editorials. I think it's important for journalists to make it clear when certain articles are sponsored or being paid for. Some articles will mention that they are sponsored but will hide them in small spaces, sometimes at the bottom at the article.

The lack of transparency has hurt brands in the past. If your audience doesn't know that an article is an ad and therefore has some bias to it. The readers will usually have a sense of this bias in the story and therefore be skeptical of your work. Trust is something that is really hard to get back.

Journalists have to be careful when they do have advertisement or sponsored pieces as those advertisements are a reflection of their brands. As an example Jake Paul a popular YouTuber, as well as Ricegum, another popular YouTuber, both have multi-millions in subscribers. Both Youtubers got sponsored by a Chinese Loot box company which says they offer the chance at winning massive prizes such as million dollar cars and a top prize of a $40 million house. These loot boxes have been proven to be a scam which was a really bad look for Jake Paul and Ricegum. To make it even worse both Jake Paul and Ricegum's primary audience are children. Promoting gambling to children is a really bad look for both Youtubers and is keeping them from getting advertisements in the future. More information can be found here. This is a good example of why it is so important to have respect for your own brand as both Youtube channels lost millions of subscribers as a result.

I don't think advertisers and journalists teaming up is always a bad thing. Journalists can use their newspapers demographic to better market for advertisers. This is good for the consumers as they are getting ads that are more relevant to them. According to Mediashift.org The New York Times teamed up with Samsung because they have a strong VR minded readership therefore when Samsung wants to show off their new VR product it works out for all parties.

The key to making this combination work is transparency. Even with transparency tough ethical questions still exist. What if your newspaper publication work with a local company on their new product but also gets information about the other companies rival about a scandal? This poses an ethical issue since it is known that you are working with the one company. It is important that working with the advertisers does not impact your judgement on posting the story.

Theatlantic.com made an article for pro advertising in relationship with journalism. This could potentially be and issue as they are known for writing a lot of advertisement pieces. They also pointed out a decline by the NYT in the amount of advertising they have seen in journalism over the past few years. There are so many more ways for advertisers to get the word out now especially with google ads and Facebook.

(Photo Credit: H3H3 Productions)