>Audiences "have a very visceral reaction to '#ad' or '#spon' or whatever it is, where they don't want to know people are getting paid for stuff even if they are."
This is the biggest issue marketers have with those who are advertising their products. Even though you can logically assume that a person you follow is sponsoring products, it is more appalling to the consumer when a sponsorship is labeled with #ad, or the likes.
If everyone was truly a self-aware consumer who knew they were being manipulated, this wouldn't be a huge issue. But the fact is that the majority of people will respond much better to subtle advertisements, then ads that label themselves as an advertisement, which most people are conditioned to ignore or dislike.
For example, after the James Bond movie "Skyfall", in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.
As for the question "Is it an advertisement?" of course it's an advertisement. But that doesn't mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.
And would that have been a bad thing? Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?
> But that doesn't mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.
Why not? What's so great about advertising that it's OK to give it free reign to play around with human psychology and influence peoples' behavior without them even being aware of it?
That's not the point. The point is that these types of advertisements are effective. In an world where standard ads are being phased out, these types of product placements are becoming more and more necessary. Adding an ad label will eventually make these types of ads obsolete. And it is very naive to think that ads aren't necessary in today's society.
I work at Google, so I fully understand how much of today's economy rests on top of advertising. But that doesn't mean society needs to, just that it has chosen to.
I haven't heard compelling arguments that advertising is much of a net boon to humanity. To me, it mostly looks like tools to steal my precious attention in order to make me feel bad about not having a product I didn't know I was missing out on in the first place.
If advertising isn't effective enough to be worth doing, fine. We'll find other ways. Yeah, micropayments have never caught on, but maybe there is an alternative, or maybe they won't be so bad once we accept we need a replacement for adverts.
I'm willing to bet non-misleading ads will still be worth enough the whole ecosystem won't collapse.
Are you arguing that without the revenue from product placements, Skyfall's budget just couldn't be made to work, and it wouldn't have been a profitable production? That seems really unlikely.
Ads may be necessary to today's society, but I'm not so sure everything we have in today's society is all that necessary. Call me naive.
>In an world where standard ads are being phased out, these types of product placements are becoming more and more necessary. Adding an ad label will eventually make these types of ads obsolete.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by standard ads - the type of advertisements that you seem to be focusing on are relatively new; product placement, of course, has been around for ages, but we haven't really had a communication medium like the Internet prior to the Internet becoming an everyday tool. The fact that people respond better when they don't know it's an ad really shouldn't give advertisers permission to bypass false advertising laws and advertising disclosure. If it comes down to consumer rights versus corporate profit, then sorry, but consumer rights trump corporate profit. If this means that we need to restructure revenue plans for online, then so be it. Native advertising is borderline unethical as it is, especially in news articles.
I cannot accept the idea of "it's the last profitable means so it is a necessity" because it's an arbitrary line to draw if the method is considered unethical. (I use unethical because it's what I consider it, but we can substitute "not wanted" or simply "not allowed" and the point stands) It's inconsistent and non-sensical to label a form of advertising "bad" or "unethical", but to then argue it should be allowed anyways when worse forms of advertising are likely more efficient. No one is arguing that advertising isn't one of the pillars upon which modern business rests; I do think that people will argue whether or not it needs to be anymore, and I know most certainly many will argue that a restructuring is probably needed to remove the need for advertising, or lighten the load.
It's likely true that soon we will hit a point where sites start closing down because the ad revenue doesn't pay the bills anymore, and I think that's fine. Advertising has warped the very structure of websites for years now, and even the infrastructure for the Internet (CDNs for advertisement, ad networks, entire platforms built around advertising first then around a service to get users to advertise to) As much as advertising may enable content, it also compresses and restricts. It obfuscates it behind ad walls, behind slideshows, behind ad-ridden pages with a download or a video where you don't have the slightest clue whether or not the content is even relevant. It's warps search results, and it slowly creeps in and overtakes social media services. (Sponsored tweets, sponsored instagrams, ad bots on social networks, SMS spam, Youtube videos) There is an awful lot of infrastructure that is built out and worked on that has absolutely nothing to do with providing content to viewers, but instead providing advertisements. The balance is simply off right now, and the rebellion against ads is a direct result of that.
I have no problem agreeing that paid Instagram posts should say #ad in the image, but I think doing the same thing in a movie is going too far. I can't really defend that though.
Daniel Craig is being paid to portray James Bond, but that doesn't need to be pointed out, right?
I suspect if movies had to put #ad on screen whenever a product is placed, it would be like the California cancer warnings. They would soon become meaningless and invisible.
Can you elaborate on why this makes a difference? On the theory that people buy "sponsored" products because they wish to feel or display an affinity with the sponsor, James Bond, the fictional chracter, is a much more effective sponsor than is Daniel Craig, the actor.
I wish that I could be James Bond
with dry martinis, cars, and blondes,
a PPK, and sharp things to say
when I'm about to get it on
Maybe it comes down to feeling that the cost of #ad in the corner of the movie is much higher than the value of doing so.
How about when ESPN televises a NASCAR race. Ever car is covered in ads, do they have to have #ad on screen for the entire broadcast?
Although, if a disclosure rule that would lead to broadcasters removing their bug watermark in the corner came along, I would be all for that.
If James Bond went on a 5 minute spiel about how Smirnoff is the only good Vodka, instead of subliminal product placement, would that be considered an ad? How much of the movie has to be about Smirnoff before it's legally just a 90 minute Smirnoff commercial.
Medicine commercials on TV already have to announce that someone is a paid actor, it's not completely unheard of.
But there are other ways to reign this in - through regulation. Italy, for example, requires placement to be natural in the narrative of the movie, and there are other regulations in places. I think one of the more helpful things would be to list the companies paying for placement OR a list of the products placed in a prominent place at the beginning of the end credits or as a screen in the beginning credits - say after the studio logo.
Information for the Italy regulation came from: https://www.pwc.com/it/it/publications/assets/docs/product-p...
For example, there was a different Bond movie where everybody was using Sony phones. That was pretty unnatural because Sony wasn't a terribly popular phone brand at the time.
It generates profit! Why are we still discussing this? /s
As people get more used to it, advertisers just work harder and harder to sneak under the radar. We might get more self aware, but if anything it just leads us to be cynical and untrusting of things that are sincere.
The end result is likely a belief that there are two and only two kinds of media:
Insincere media where I can see that I'm being advertised to.
Insincere media that has outsmarted me and where I can't see that I'm being advertised to.
On a practical note, reputation works in this circumstances: if I read a piece about, I don't know, fruit jam industry in NYT, it's likely not a blatant paid ad. This is what they monetize when selling subscriptions; should they stop, their reputation, and with it the subscription revenue, would go down.
Its not obvious its an advertisement because if it were the responses would be the same.
I see why they don't want to, although I don't agree. But whining about how it's unclear isn't winning them any points here. It's clear, they just don't like it.
But not if the user knows they are being mislead.
By that logic, we should allow loan sharks to not show their rates - after all, it's much easier to get a couple of customers paying 9000% than many customers paying 10%. If you show people 9000%, they stop borrowing!
At least in some industries. I haven't seen that attitude in tech or software at all. Besides Kim promoting her own app of course.
On the business/productivity side, those aren't mass market products so why waste money marketing to the masses who aren't going to buy anyway? Though there is all sorts of other nonsense that goes on here too. Just look at all of the not-too-secret courting of reviewers and YouTubers that nVidia and AMD did around their recent GPU launches, for example. (none of this is surprising: it's called marketing. But it is important IMO that it be disclosed regardless of what's being pitched or who it's being pitched too)
A bad example would probably be that one Kardashian guy who accidentally posted the instructions about how to pose and what to say instead of following the instructions.
You're referring to earned media.
I wholeheartedly disagree. What about the case where the person involved actually loves the product and wanted to talk about it anyway? This is frequently the case with gamers, models that prefer certain makeup, etc. What's worth doing is worth getting paid for, but that doesn't necessarily mean they "intend to deceive" - in fact it's the exact opposite. It's an honest endorsement.
IMO, it should only be required to be labeled as an ad if the post wouldn't have been made unless the brand paid for it.
When a company pays a person to endorse a product then it's in the person's best interests not to search for (or promote) a better alternative.
It's great if they would use and promote the product anyway, but it's naive to think getting paid hasn't influenced them in any way.
> ... then get someone to actually like your product(, and then it won't matter that they disclose it)
I would say that to a person in person and I think it highlights that there is another perspective for the person to consider, mentioning those things because I think they would be the closest arguments the tribunal would consider given those guidelines
Also thought given the plethory of tech ad startups these days, I figured others would agree with me, but since you called it out, I'll take the hint
Civil commentary is about more than just language choice. As a rule of thumb object to content, not meta information. You can replacing dumb with naive, but the underlining commentary is about the messenger not the message.
Now, with some actual commentary it's less obvious. But, when the entire comment is simply a snippy one liner it's just filler. As it stands I can guess what the objection was, but not in any meaningful fashion.
PS: If I would change the rules I would make it clear that it makes boring reading is one of the major things to avoid.
If you want your sponsorship to come across as real and honest, then get someone to actually like your product, and then it won't matter that they disclose it, as they'll be able to explain why they like it in a convincing way. The only reason people want to hide the 'sponsored' element is that the product is bad, and paying people is the only way to get them to associate with it.
When I watch an Extra Credits video sponsored by a games company, it comes off as honest because it's clear that it's an advert and the content is still quality and obviously unaltered. When Purge (DOTA 2 personality), talks about DotaBuff, it still comes off as honest as he shows how he uses the service and what value it provides him. This can be done right, and is, by reputable people.