You may have noticed that advertising is everywhere. And somehow marketers are still finding new places to try and get your attention. It can be overwhelming at times and other times we don’t even really notice it, but it’s having an effect. Marketing is incredibly powerful in influencing our buying behavior.
Understanding online advertising is an important step in becoming a more well-informed digital citizen.
Where do I see ads online?
Well everywhere. Often the most obvious are the targeted ads. You’ll see these on social media and search engines. They collect a lot of your personal information and then target specific products and services for you based on what they know about you. This is an incredibly effective form of marketing and why companies like Google and Facebook could buy a fleet of solid-gold yachts. Who cares if they sink! We’ll just buy more!
Direct marketing features static ads that stay displayed on a certain site. They believe a site has an audience they want to engage with and partner with them to show up for all their users. Offline this looks like magazine ads and billboards.
Product placement marketing. Beats by Dre headphones might not have anything to do with the concert footage you’re watching, but my favorite artist is wearing them and now I sure want a pair.
Affiliate marketing. Very popular online. If you have a food blog or camping gear channel on YouTube, you can add links to the products you’re talking about and get a commission on anything Amazon or another company sells from a customer you directed their way. Often why you just have to use “Prairie Gold Flour!” for this muffin recipe.
…and there are many more but that’s a good start. If you think I’m missing a big one, let me know in the comments. The team at MediaSmarts and Common Sense Media do an excellent job on this subject as well.
Why is advertising everywhere?
It’s incredibly effective and incredibly profitable. When Facebook was trying to figure out how to make money, they decided to give away a fun tool to users for free (social media), harvest as much personal information as possible, and sell your attention to advertising who could really really super duper target their ads to exactly who they think would want them. That is a wildly profitable model that many large digital companies have followed.
Remember: if an online tool is free then there is a good chance you’re what’s being sold!
How do we explore advertising with our kids?
Instead of just consuming advertising non-stop throughout our day, we need to think critically about all of it to be strong digital citizens.
This is a fun one because kids can pretend to be a CEO for the day. The best way to explore advertising is to put yourself in the position of a company trying to reach its customers. Then you can explore who your target audience is and the myriad of ways you can reach them online. No doubt, your kids will know about some but there is a good chance they will be surprised by some as well. As they discover new ways to market to their audience they will have a better understanding of all the ways they are marketed too and what companies are encouraging them to do. This is a fun exercise that includes entrepreneurship as well.
Think about something you purchased today or in the last week. How did you find out about that product or service?
Ask your kids who their favorite online people are. There is a chance you’ve never heard of them. How much do they make each year? How do they generate that revenue?
Since there are always new ways to advertise online, this isn’t a one-time exercise. We need to keep asking these questions and keep digging into this topic to stay up to date.
Shout out to Kermode
Understanding advertising and how it affects you as a digital citizen is a crucial part of being smarter, safer, and kinder online. Kermode helps users explore advertising and over 20 other digital literacy topics. Combined with its cutting-edge software that helps users evaluate online content, Kermode is the most comprehensive digital literacy platform available today. Contact their friendly team for more information: info@kermodeeducation.com.
