Digital advertising has taken over the marketing industry in the last decade, and it’s only going to continue to grow and dominate the sector which this essay will confirm. Forms of advertising this essay addresses include, (but are not limited to), display ads, banner ads, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social networking, email marketing, online classified ads and site takeovers. This essay aims to investigate four key areas within Graphic design that must be considered in regard to online/digital advertising prior to pursuing a career in the sector; Legal, Economic, Technology and Sociocultural. Within the Legal section this essay will consider legal obstacles and their consequences in addition to reviewing consumer wellbeing laws which aim to safeguard the public from invasive and manipulative online advertising.
Following on the essay will study the impact of the economy on the advertising fields and determine whether a career in advertising can flourish independent of the state of the economy. Technology is the next element of advertising that is important to evaluate, here the essay will inform on the history of advertising and examine predictions as to how technological advancements will impact the direction future advertising takes. It is vital to understand how the previous topics have impacted on the sociocultural environment within advertising and so the essay will lastly analyse their impacts.
Legal
This section is going to discuss how advertising is governed, what laws and rules must be followed and the consequences for not abiding to them. It’s important to address this as there are several circumstances which alter how the guidelines are applied which in turn creates a very different set of restrictions for designers. This essay will highlight three integral consumer wellbeing laws which aim to safeguard the public from invasive and manipulative online advertising.
In the advertising world there is an in-depth set of rules and regulations that must be followed. In the UK, The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing is the bible for non-broadcast advertisements, direct marketing communications and sales promotions. The self-regulatory system contains three bodies: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the Advertising Standards Board of Finance (ASBOF) and the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). The guidelines that are laid out are there to ensure the wellbeing of the consumer. These include rules such as; managing consumer anxieties, ‘Marketing communications must not cause fear or distress without justifiable reason. Marketers must not use a shocking claim or image merely to attract attention.’ (CAP,2020), minimising consumer harassment, ‘Marketers must not make persistent and unwanted marketing communications by telephone, fax, mail, email or other remote media.’ (CAP,2020) and to avoid deceiving the consumer, ‘Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information, by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.’ (CAP,2020). This essay has homed in on these specific laws as when applied to the online/digital advertising sector they become three of the most important to protect the consumer from harassment, fear mongering and deceit.
Control over the digital world is close to impossible meaning its vital to take great care before releasing an advert into the world; One case study saw Dolce & Gobbana 2007 banned ‘gang rape’ (E-News, 2015) advert (Figure 1) resurface online in 2015 causing an immense wave of backlash and stigma for the brand. On the other hand some brands create adverts with the intention of being banned as the publicity can sometimes be far greater than the reach of the initial advert; an example of such was Iceland’s 2018 Christmas Ad which was knowingly in breach of political advertising rules dictated by the 2003 Communications Act, but in the process created a media storm and, subsequently, publicity greatly exceeding the original advert.
Unless trusted, accepted and believed, marketing communications cannot succeed and so it is key to the success of advertising to abide by the rules. Failure to comply with the regulations of the CAP code could result in fines, prosecution or imprisonment. As a designer it is my responsibility to ensure my work complies with all codes laid out by CAP in order to build trust with the consumer and to create successful campaigns. As of October 2018 advertising is the least trusted profession in the UK (Figure 2) the rules of the CAP code need to be enforced and strictly followed before the public will regain faith in the sector.
Economic
This section will review the impact of the economy on the overall status of the digital advertisement sector. It will address the current UK market and evaluate the future of the industry using statistics and forecasts. In doing so it will determine the stability I can expect from pursuing a career in this area.
Advertising expenditure in the UK is expected to reach over £26 billion in 2020. Ad spend has been increasing steadily over the last decade; up from 15.5 billion in 2010, with every year over this timeframe seeing considerable growth. However, Brian Wieser Business Intelligence at GroupM, states ‘the global economy has weakened in 2019 and recovery looks unlikely in 2020. In this environment, it is predicted advertising growth will slow down at a global level despite solid growth from the US and UK.’ (Wieser, 2019)
Although Google and Facebook are on track to remain the largest two advertising platforms in the foreseeable future, Amazon is expected to experience significant growth this year and become the third-largest online presents. In 2019 Amazon quarterly ad revenues surpassed $4 billion for the first time in the fourth quarter. That brought the company’s annual advertising revenues in 2019 to roughly $14.1 billion, up 39% from $10.1 billion in 2018 (Figure 3/4). Digital advertising allows advertisers to use online technologies to bring promotional content to consumers. By the end of 2020, UK digital advertising spend is projected to be worth approximately 15.6 billion British pounds (Statistica,2020). Internet-related advertising is now the most important advertising medium globally, with $326 billion in ad revenue during 2020, up from $294 billion in 2019. Accounting for 52% of global advertising tracked in WPP’s 2020 forecast, digital took the greatest share of advertising in most countries for 2019 and is predicted to do so everywhere else in 2020 (Wieser, 2019).
Advertising and the economy are a system that directly impact one another ‘In a country in which consumer spending determines the future of the economy, advertising motivates people to spend more. By encouraging more buying, advertising promotes both job growth and productivity growth both to help meet increased demand and to enable each consumer to have more to spend.’ (Economic Effects of Advertising, 2019) When taking these facts into consideration, the potential of a successful and lucrative career in advertisement looks stable and promising.
Technological
When addressing the future technology and methods of advertising it is first important to understand the history of the sector. Firstly discussing the origins of advertising prior to investigating forecasts of where the future of advertising will led. This section will specifically explore advancements with regards to advertising digitally/online and how they could evolve in the coming years.
Advertising started as soon as commerce began, there is evidence of tradesman’s signs from ancient civilisations. Advancements in transportation and mass production meant advertising was more important than ever. In 1920s was the rise of the radio and then in the 30s we saw the introduction of television which gave advertisers the first access to a wide and captive audience. It wasn’t until 2009 that the internet overtook tv as the largest advertising sector, and now it is unrivalled by any other form of media (Figure 5).
With the advancement of data tracking such as cookies, beacons and clickstreams advertising has been able to become far more specific with who the ad is targeting. Although for the companies this is greatly desired as it increased the conversion rate per expenditure the public has become overly aware of the potential invasion of their privacy. Behavioural profiling has gone viral across the internet, enabling firms to reach users with specific messages based on their location, interests, browsing history and demographic group but opinions on such catered adverts are widely divided (Figure 6).
There’s no doubt that technology will continue to shape the future of how we advertise. There have already been dramatic shifts in the past year, powered by technologies such as 3D, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality (Abramovich, 2019). ‘With the rapid growth in hyper-connected consumers, VR and AI are assuming an increasingly prominent role in marketing and advertising efforts as a means to provide more authentic and personalized engagement opportunities… Technology is allowing us as marketers to push the boundaries in the brand/consumer relationship and, in the next few years, will transform the engagement model so that it’s much more curated and customized.’ (Breithaupt, 2019)
In a world that is creating more and more specific adverts personalised to a small demographic it begs to wonder where and how creativity can thrive; I believe the answer to this question lies in exploring the boarder methods of communication and immersion and how advertising companies can creative innovative ways to interact with their customer base, to this end I am excited to see how my career in such a sector will unfold.
Sociocultural
This section will discuss how changing habits on and offline has sparked the surged of specific targeting. It is vital to understand how the previously discussed technological advancements have consequently led to an industry thriving on private data and whether or not this is an advance that will have an overall positive impact on consumers.
With the rise of technology and the increasing number of hours that are spent on social media, targeted marketing has begun to thrive over the years. Targeted marketing is a form of advertising, including online, that is directed towards audiences with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic based on, economic, sex, age, the level of education, income level and employment or psychographic focused, based on consumer’s values, personality, attitudes, opinions, lifestyles and interests. Algorithms are put in place to sort this data that identifies consumers with specific needs or characteristics to match with appropriate products or brands. This sector of advertising started to grow exponentially, with an increasing potential to be in breach of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing rules about harassment. Figure 7 shows how divided the opinions of the public are about this method.
In 2018 GDPR came in to, providing the biggest overhaul of data law since the data protection act of 1998. It became a legal requirement for all companies to adhere to the regulations in place or face a heavy fine, this forced marketers to relinquish a lot of their dependence on behavioural data collection. Furthermore, it directly implicated several business practices that were at the heart of digital ad targeting at that time. ‘This year, we started to see the impact of a new age of data privacy, with a number of high-profile fines being issued under the GDPR, on top of a number of incidents of media owners misusing user data. Initiatives like Intelligent Tracking Protection have sent a clear message to advertisers: data needs to be handled appropriately, and personalisation should not come at the cost of user privacy.’(Gilbert,2019) Its vital advertisers are empathetic with their audiences concern over their privacy, I want to be part of the change from invasive to useful advertising methods in my own advertising career in the future.
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