Wednesday night, at our last Texas Advertising Group meeting of the semester our guest speaker said something that made me think about the way in which advertisements are influencing our society. This particular night we were hosting Owen Hannay, the CEO of Slingshot and Danielle, the head of the Austin office. It was a normal meeting with a presentation followed by career advice and Q&A. During the Q&A, a girl asked the guest speaker, ‘How do you balance work and personal life?’. It is a common question that everyone asks and the same answer is always given. What surprised me was the CEO’s answer. “Danielle is not herself when she hasn’t had any sleep, she has Snickers moments every once in a while, but so does everyone else” The words are not the same but everyone could recognize that he had just made a reference to the ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ snickers campaign. This campaign has been able to appeal to our most basic, psychological need for food. We all understand the irritable emotions and impatience that we feel when we are hungry (or sleep deprived) and forced to interact in public. Snicker’s has done a good job by staying relevant in the consumers mind through their use of mainstream examples and has even become popular in other markets like Latin America. | |
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Native advertising can be defined as a form of paid media where the ads follow the visual design and behave consistently with the user experience in order to feel like organic, natural content. This process is intended to build trust and create a meaningful connection with the users, or potential customers.
According to research from IPG media lab, native ads are viewed for the same amount of time as editorial content and are twice as likely to be shared than a banner ad. 2 Solve Media believes that native advertising is the future of creating consumer interaction so they released a series of ads highlighting the ineffectiveness of banner ads in order to promote a move toward native advertising. These ads state “You are 111.40 times more likely to watch American Idol than you are to click on a banner ad” and “You are 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad.” Additionally, native advertising has been shown to be successful and increase a consumer’s perception of a brand. A research conducted by IAB and Edelman showed that a site’s perceived credibility can “boost the credibility of sponsored content up to 33%.” But this research also showed that of those that understand native advertising only 54% were receptive to relevant native advertising. Regarding the ethical implications of native advertising, the FTC hosted a one-day workshop to examine the blending of advertisements with news, entertainment, and other editorial content in digital media. Their findings were inconclusive and they were unable to come to a consensus but it prompted editors to establish self-regulatory guidelines. Based on the information above I believe that brands should open their doors to native advertising. Over 41% of brands are currently using native advertising and creating useful content. Brands must be careful about the quality of the content that they post and understand that consumers are most receptive to relevant information. They should create content that consumers are willing to actively engage with and will seek out independently. As long as the content benefits the consumer brands will be able to maintain a positive image. Programmatic advertising has the potential to analyze vast amounts of consumer data which the human mind does not have the capability to process. This makes us question whether or not our current jobs will still be relevant in the future. But these processes allow media planners to optimize their time. With the emergence of multiple mobile platforms, buyers will now be able to analyze millions of impressions and alter their messages to target more unique audiences.
It is still premature to analyze the full range of issues with this system but we do know that a machine lacks the human intuition necessary to avoid disasters. An example of this would be a news-breaking article about a drunk driving accident with the keywords: alcohol, X-brand beer, party, and X University appears. As a result of these keywords, an ad for Y-brand beer will appear. How can we fix this? This is where we, the media planners come in.
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