Developments In The Advertising Industry

The Guardian Article

The article posted on 'The Guardian discusses a significant change in the advertising industry, specifically how there has been a great decline in advertising views correlating to advertising success. The article mentions statistics and how institutions are reacting to the decline in marketing success.

The main challenge that advertising industries are facing is the audience's reluctance to actually view the advertisements that the industries are targeting towards them. The target audience have always managed to find a way to avoid viewing advertisements. An example of this is ad blockers that users install to block adverts from popping up so that they can view whatever content that they were originally trying to access. Another way the target audience has managed to view content without advertising to disrupt their experience is streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. These are subscription streaming services that the audience pay for to access a range of television shows and films. As the subscriptions are paid for, the streaming service have no need to generate revenue through advertisement. 

Advertising industries have somewhat managed to overcome ad blocking and avoidance of advertisement through native advertising which is when industries disguise their advertisement as the content that the audience is trying to access. Known examples include newsfeed articles on websites or social media. Although the content may appear to be interesting content, such as a top ten list or a miraculous story, it subtly promotes and advertises a product by disguising it as being part of the content or mentioning it within the article or list. An example of this could be a list of "7 of accessories everyone needs to own" and within that list the advertised product could be recommended or mentioned to the audience however not in a way that makes it seem obvious that they are being advertised to. Industries also use branded content to promote their brand and products. An event could be hosted by an institution and in throughout the event there would be constant branding. RedBull had paid for and hosted a fall from the edge of the Earth. Throughout the broadcast there is blatant branding to really put emphasis as to who is responsible for the hosting of the event. Although this method has slowly decreased in success, targeted advertising is still used to target a specific audience member by purchasing their information from other services they use, notably the free services. They then use this information to determine what the consumer may be interested in. Although the audience can often ignore this by installing ad blockers. 

Native adverts when closely observed can seem blatant and shameful. Often product placement in other media tends to be the most blatant advertising. Music videos are renowned for their over promotion of products that institutions have paid for the artists to advertise. Films and television shows also place products in a manner which seems natural and within the context however observant audience members can identify product placement in a scene. An example could be a a character drinking a soft drink which happens to be branded by a well known and well advertised brand. 

Although advertisement can be an annoyance and a way for greedy industries to grab consumers' money, advertisement is a significant part of economic growth for the world. As the mass audience live in a consumerist society, they crave products to consume. Most products need to be advertised in some form to be a successful selling product. However, if the audience keep neglecting advertisement then institutions will slowly begin to become less and less successful until they reach bankruptcy in which case the institution will cease to exist. If the institution are no longer active then they will no longer be able to supply products that consumers will demand. This will happen to multiple institutions until there are barely a handful of industries if not none left to respond to the audience's needs. This will cost society to halt global progress and may even revert the world back to an era before the industrial revolution. This of course can be avoided if audiences are willing to put up with advertisement which persuade consumers to purchase products, generating profit for industries to research, expand and advance their products and other projects that they may fund, some may very well being significant to global advancement.