Online Advertising and Privacy Concerns

So far in this blog, we have thoroughly discussed how online advertising can benefit a business. This is very important, because you, the readers, are the future business leaders of this country. As business students, learning how to use online advertising is essential to our future careers. However, this blog post will serve to view online advertising from an alternate viewpoint: consumers. Taking our customer's thoughts and concerns into account is a necessary function of a successful advertising campaign.

As a society, I believe people are accepting the increasing role technology plays in our daily lives. But as with any societal or cultural change, people will have hesitation.  Part of this hesitation dwells in the worry that personal information might not stay personal. As technological advances allow businesses to collect "big data", consumers worry about the prospect of a "big brother" monitoring their every move.  But are these concerns valid? Some would argue that they are. Recent data breaches at Target and Home Depot have proven to the consumer that technology has its faults. In addition, American culture generally values personal privacy. These are examples of obstacles in the way of online advertising; but it is up to business leaders to take into account the cultural environment they are operating in and find ways to combat the concerns of their customers.

One way to approach this problem is by utilizing the Risk/Return trade-off. Simply put, this principal states that people are willing to take on greater risks for greater returns. To apply it to online advertising, consumers would be willing to accept a greater perceived security risk if they saw more personal benefit from advertising online.  But how can business managers increase consumer benefit? I would argue that the best answer to this question is RELEVANCE. If consumers consistently see ads that are relevant to their wants and needs, that benefit would outweigh their privacy concerns. One study found that “two-thirds of Internet users believe better targeted ads would be less annoying, and 45% would share personal information in exchange for that advertising relevance.”  As technology leaders improve the techniques we use in online advertising, we will be able to provide more relevant ads to our customers and ease their concerns about personal privacy.

Do you think privacy should be a concern in online advertising? Is relevance the best way to provide benefit to customers? How else could the business community ease consumer concerns?

Advertising On Social Media

Social Media is currently sweeping the nation's attention by a vast majority. Almost every company or individual uses some type of social media  on a regularly daily bases. Whether it's for advertising or just simply for entertainment, it is still being used.  Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter,  Tumblr, and YouTube are dominating in the social media world. Youtube has over 1 billion unique users every month.  Facebook is used by 1 in every 13th person on the earth. Twitter has 232 million monthly users. While Tumblr has 300 million viewers per month. Needless to say social media is has a very large audience. Meaning that through social media companies can reach a wide range of different target markets.  But what does this mean for advertisers?

Social media allows advertisers to successfully market their product, service, or concern to the world. If everyone is using social media then everyone, at some point, is going to be viewing an advertisment. Let's look at twitter for example. Twitter has a rate of 11 new activated accounts per second. That means that every second 11 more people are joining twitter. By doing the math you can see how large those numbers add up making twitter a very large audience for advertising. Budweiser took note of this opportunity as they recently advertised their #FriendsAreWaiting promotional video against drinking and driving. By using twitter they were able to grasp the attention of their target audience hoping to bring awareness to the dangers of driving drunk. Clorox brand also recently used twitter as their platform to bring awareness to their Safe water project, which is a project that is sought to provide safe and clean water in Peru. By using twitter they were able to reach people who were concerned about the issues of unsafe water in Peru and also gain support from people who support the cause of the Safe water project movement. These are just a couple of ways that some companies are using twitter as their stepping ground for advertising.

Now let's look at Facebook and Tumblr. Both social media websites with very large participation and audiences. Facebook is unique in the way that it's marketed towards all age groups from the Baby boomers to GenY's. Tumblr is unique in the way that every user is able to make their own unique page and create anything whether it's a poem or photo that describes their personality or anything they believe in. However when it comes to advertising apparently Tumblr is the place to go as it outpaced every other social media sites in revenue per visit (with Facebook being the runner up). Tumblr visitors/ users are more likely to feed into the advertisements displayed on the sites than any other social media site users. Tumblr believes that its users have a generally higher income than users of other social media sites. It is important that advertisers pay close attention to the demographics of these social networks users so they are able to target the right group in whom they are trying to advertise to.

Advertising on Youtube is similar to that of twitter. Companies use promotional videos to grasp their target audiences attention. Have you ever tried to watch a YouTube video and are forced to watch a 1 minute commercial or advertisement?  Sometimes you can skip the add but other times it is inevitable. This is YouTube's main way of advertising. It may seem like a burden and nuisance to their consumers, but in the end it grasps the viewers attention and that is the main goal. Many companies believe that YouTube is the best place to advertise when it comes to social media because EVERYONE uses it. Even if you don't have a YouTube account, whenever you want to watch a video or search a specific song, YouTube is the place to go!

Advertising on social media in my opinion is very vital to a company's success or at least, at the very least, getting out awareness of their product or service. How do you feel about advertising on the social media networks that you use? Do you find the ads annoying or maybe useful? Feel free to share any thoughts, questions, or opinions! 

Sources: 

https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facebook-statistics-stats-facts-2011/

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v-monthly-active-users-2013-11

http://allthingsd.com/20130521/how-many-users-does-tumblr-really-have/#

https://blog.twitter.com/2014/how-clorox-is-using-twitter-to-bring-safe-drinking-water-to-peru