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Advertorialsand Infomercialshave been partially responsible for the blur between advertising and sales messages and product information. . Both Advertorials and Infomercials are traditional offline media. Advertorials traditionally appeared in print whilst Infomercials traditionally utalised broadcast media.
“An advertorial is an advertisement written in the form of an objective opinion editorial, and presented in a printed publication —usually designed to look like a legitimately and independent news story. The term "advertorial" is a portmanteau of "ad" and "editorial." (wikipedia).
Infomercials appear on television and can vary in length from 2 minutes to an hour, or even longer. Currently Advertorials and Infomercials are finding their way onto online environments where the distinction between advertising and sales messages and product information a even less distinctive than when they are used in offline environments.
The format of both Advertorials and infomercials are being modified to work in an online environment. Enliven Technologies have been create by multimedia companies such as Narrative Communications who use animation, graphics, interactivity to create infomercials that disguise sales pitches and product information and capture peoples attention.
The use of these technologies is controversial especially when used to target venerable groups such as children. There are more than 50 companies creating online sites for children (Mendels, 1997) children that often don’t know the difference between an advertisement and a game, sites such as Pokemon World and Cartoon network and Nikelodeon’s Nike-at-Nine draw more than 15% of there audience from under the age of twelve. Media ethics are raised with the use of this type of marketing; often parents can’t tell the difference between Advertorials, Infomercials and standard advertising so how is a child expected to do so, especially when marketers are gaining information through the children was they play games and solve puzzles. Advertorials and Informational pages shouls be designed so that consumers are awear of the source of the information and possible content bias (Cleland, 1996).
There is a push towards stronger regulation of children’s sites and distinctiveness of online advertising, especially in the areas of Advertorials and Informercials. A research study was conducted between May 14 and June 2004; the study involves 2,200 American adults eighteen years and older. It became evident that despite the fact that the majority of people interviewed felt confident in their search engine knowledge and ability to week out advertisements and paid for content, they in fact were naively informed about uniformed about the way they conducted searches. "I would compare it to the confusion surrounding advertorials in print and infomercials on television," said Deborah Fallows, senior research fellow at Pew. "However, it raises the question: How much clearer can the search engines be?" (McGann, 2005) It became evident through the research that 70% of people that utilised search engines did so unsophisticatedly, this results in an the gathering of often biased forms of information, in fact 68% of consumers perceived search engines to be unbiased sources of information. This highlights the ability for advertisers to use search engine optimisation can place advertorials and Infomercials at the top of search lists to reach an unsuspecting unsophisticated audience (McGann, 2005).
Infomercials, although considered deceptive by some, actually are preferred by other as an advertising source, because of there unobtrusive nature, they are perceived to be good sources of marketed information that link subject matters, brands and products together to create a place where information can be gathered and purchases can be made, with online purchasing possibilities and links to online stores.
Barbara, K., and Norman, M. (2001) "Just A CLick Away: Advertising on the Internet,"USA: Allyn and Bacon.
cleland, K. (1996, Sept 4)"Web narrows gap between ads, editorials."Advertising Age p.s3-s14.
Mendels,P.(1997, sep 29)"DIlemma for kids web sites: Seperating fun stuff from ads."New York Times online. retrieved from, www.nytimes.com.
Richards, G. (1997, April 2)" Online ads: web site advertising models"Redwood Publishing GMT. retrieved September 20, 2005, from http://www.o-a.com/archive/1997/April/0030.html
McGann, R. (2205, Jan 23)" Are Search Ads the Web's Infomercials?"retrieved September 20,2005, from http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/search_tools/article.php/3462931
Tia Lancaster
--Tia Lancaster 22:15, 27 Oct 2005 (EST)
