Hybrid Assignment 04

 

Native advertising

 

I have to agree with Taylor when she argues that “many hoped the Internet would help create a more varied cultural landscape, advertising dollars continue to distort the market by creating perverse incentives, encouraging the production of irresistibly clickable content” because I am one of many who thought that this would be the case.  In fact, as I click on today, I am bombarded with “unnecessary” advertisements that interrupt my reason for visiting a site.  Taylor’s definition in the book of “native advertising” explains how a site like Buzz Feed, a person would be hit with many advertisements with many different messages in order to market their product to a consumer, who may not necessarily be interested in the product but is forced to view the brand and its content in an attempt to coerce the consumer in to buying.

 

Tastemakers

 

Another example of unnecessary advertisement or public notice would be companies collaborating with one another to form double messages that may not pertain to each other’s business, but like native advertising, force their products or services on to the reader.  Tastemakers will coerce the reader of a site to see both ads and send a message that (although not connected) will have the viewer believe that both products are doubly good and therefore should be consumed.  Taylor explains that Tastemakers are often partnered with Brands in order to sell things to readers.  She states that “this kind of corporate saturation has long been the dream of free market acolytes” which only means that ads are being marketed freely, with or without the permission of the reader or viewer.  It often puts me in the mind of television commercials, when (we) the viewer of television are interrupted by ads, yet we pay for cable television and should watch freely without interruption since we’ve paid.  So, I often wonder, if we are paying cable, and the advertisers are paying cable, who wins and what are we getting as consumers, since the advertisers are getting their products and services out there, what are we actually getting.

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