Advertising: ambient advertising
facebook, Bebo and myspace, in tweets and
in social networking generally (see network-
ing: social networking) we make ourselves
easy targets for advertisers. Our sharing is an
advertiser’s opportunity, hence the growth of
behavioural targeting.
Not only do advertisers track our activities,
our patterns of behaviour, and then match them
with appropriately directed commercials, they
encourage us – in the spirit of the Internet –
to participate in our own marketization: we
purchase a romantic novel online and a galaxy
of other romances are presented for our delecta-
tion. For ad purposes, we have been typecast; we
have become consumer-engaged.
Ads appear on personal and group blogs (see
blogging), in many cases allowing bloggers
to recoup their costs. Marketers have quickly
come to recognize that ‘in-your-face’ advertising
meets resistance online, while a key strategy is
to make ads seem more informational, and more
personal and more discreet.
Online ad-dramas such as Bebo’s Kate Modern
(2008) have integrated advertising into the
narrative, usually with a degree of fi nesse that
avoids detracting from the story. ‘Integrations’,
as the ad business refers to them, are the Net’s
version of product placement in fi lms and
TV, only with Net ad-drama the viewers them-
selves can be integrated into the story by, for
example, inviting them to be fi lm extras.
Production costs have remained problematic:
sponsors want their products integrated, thus
the number of sponsors has to be limited to
the number of products or services that can
be reasonably absorbed in the drama. Bebo
pulled out of funding ad-drama in 2009 despite
the success, albeit temporary, of a number of
online productions such as Kirill, The Gap
Ye a r, Gotham Girls and Zombie Bashers. See
advertising: targeted advertising; web
or online drama.
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) Inde-
pendent body set up by the advertising industry
to police rules incorporated in advertising codes.
On 1 November 2004 the ASA became the
regulatory authority for broadcasting advertising
following the communications act, 2003 and
the creation of the Offi ce of Communications
(Ofcom). The Authority’s mission is to ‘apply
the advertising codes and uphold standards
in all media on behalf of consumers, business
and society’. It off ers a ‘one-stop’ approach to
customer complaints, a ‘single point of reference
for consumers, advertisers and broadcasters,
while respecting the diff erent obligations inher-(Routledge, 2002); John O’Shaughnessy and Nicholas
Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Persuasion in Advertising
(Routledge, 2004); Ken Burtenshaw, Nik Mahon
and Caroline Barfoot, Th e Fundamentals of Creative
Advertising (AVA Publishing, 2006); David Ogilvy,
Ogilvy on Advertising (Prion, 2007); Vance Packard,
Th e Hidden Persuaders (Ig Publishing, 2007 edn with
introduction by Mark Crispin Miller); Mark Tungate,
Adland: a global history of advertising (Kogan Page,
2007).
Advertising: ambient advertising Adver-
tisements that feature in contexts other than
the printed page, on film or in broadcasting,
which we encounter in everyday life situations
and are designed to surround and confront the
prospective customer – in the street, on bus
shelters, in underground stations and trains, in
airports, public lavatories and latterly in places
of education; indeed wherever there is space for
the advertiser to press home image and message.
An alternative term is captive audience adver-
tising. David Bollier of the Annenburg School
of Communications, in an article entitled ‘Th e
grotesque, smirking gargoyle: Th e commercial-
ization of America’s consciousness’ published
on the tom.paine.com website (8 August 2002),
writes of advertising ‘ambushing people as they
use public restrooms, gas pumps, elevators ... By
ones and twos, such actions generally are incon-
sequential. In aggregate, however, the sheer
pervasiveness of commercialism in public spaces
and contemporary life has the malodorous whiff
of a Corporate Big Brother’. Bollier believes that
the ‘sheer ubiquity of marketing in hundreds of
nooks and crannies of daily life has become a
defi ning framework of cultural values’.
Advertising boycotts Th e reliance of the press
and of commercial television upon advertising
for revenue indicates the important infl uence
advertisers and their clients can wield over the
media. Where a newspaper may be deemed to be
publishing material or expressing views which
might be detrimental to consumerist interest,
companies pull out their expensive advertise-
ment – or threaten to do so, and thus exercise
censorship. Th e fi nancial consequences of such
boycotts can be devastating.
Advertising: Internet advertising There
is consensus that the internet has had the
eff ect of redrawing the landscape of advertis-
ing. Essentially, advertisers know more about
us as consumers because, as we use the Net,
operate our Internet-accessible mobile phones,
we reveal more information about who we
are, what our tastes are and how we exchange
information about ourselves with others. On