1) European Advertising Industry: Issues and Challenges
The global advertising industry had shown definite signs toward recovery in the aftermath of worst-ever slumps in advertising. Media-burying firms, TV broadcasting, billboard companies and even print advertising had witnessed dramatic changes over the past few years, with the participation of recent technological developments that made possible the e-adverting, online and mobile advertising. Europe is not an exception to the booming advertising industry with United Kingdom (UK), Germany and France as the main players. The European advertising industry is a self-regulated within a framework of legislation whereby undesirable advertising practices are closely monitored (, 2005).
Advertising in Europe is categorized as ‘above the line’ or ‘below the line’. Above the line advertising refers to media advertising while below the line is consists of all other marketing communications including sales promotions, direct marketing, events, public relations and packaging among several others. When referred to advertising though, this is generally understood as advertising in the media. For the purpose of regulating both categories, the European Commission created the concept of ‘commercial communications. Essentially, advertisers, advertising agencies and the media agree on a code of advertising standards to ensure that any advertising is ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’ ( and , 2004, ).
Demography is the first macro-economic issue that impacts the industry as manifested by the growth in various segments of audiences (i.e. children’s, news program and sports); and that how we perceived commercials will greatly depend on the values and assumptions. Demography is seen is to be a vital aspect of the forces that are currently shaping and reshaping the world as well as relating to the features of the societies (, 1994). In addition is also associated with trends that relate to characteristics of age, gender and distribution of wealth. For instance, the preference of advertising medium such as the press including newspapers, magazines and directories will greatly differ in two leading ad markets in Europe: British with 45.3% while French with 41.7% market share only (, 2005).
Identity, which relates to the central bonding attributes of different communities and culture, is the second macro-environmental concern. Whether explicitly or not, the European Union as collective as an organisation should be also conforms to distinct identities when dealing with marketing and promotion and how such identity should be encouraged and integrated in advertisements (, 2005, ). In the UK, for example, ‘Royal Highness’ is a prefix that is generally referred to the British Royal Family; therefore, must not be offended, insulted or insinuated something else other than what is acceptable. The use of the phrase ‘Royal Highness’ is even regulated in the Code on the Scheduling of Television Advertising.
Technology is the third major factor impacting the advertising industry in the Europe. Technology as a mean of development and survival also finds its way into advertising. Online advertising in Europe, as an example, is reported to be closing the gap on the United States (US) with 40% upsurgence to €11 billion in 2007. The European online advertising industry grew to a market value of €14.5 billion compared to that of the US as taken within the same period. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe), 65% of European online ad budgets were spent in UK, Germany and France. Greece, Spain and Slovenia are smaller markets which also enjoyed high growth rates (, 2008).
While at it, the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) was founded in 11992 to support self-regulatory bodies across Europe. The main reason for the formation of such alliance is to take a role to resolve cross-national advertising issues or the cross-border complaints as well as to operate as a measure of parity across its member countries, which is made possible by the fourth element that impacts the dynamics of European advertising – globalisation. Inherent to every advertising regulatory body are adjudicating on cases bought to their attention and acting as censorship bodies, ensuring fair claims and not misleading on advertisements especially in the era of ‘Americanisation’ of advertisements (, ).
The more pressing issues is how the advertising industry should comply and employ ethical rules, prepared with a social responsibility to the consumers and the society as a whole and with due respect to the rules of competition. In Europe, self-regulation is achieved through established set of rules and principles of best practice to which the advertising industry voluntarily agrees to be bound. The problem now, however, is how the European advertising industry will consolidate the advertising-driven businesses in light of the product placement proposals, a perennial dilemma about how law and self-regulation can and should interact in modern Europe (, 2006, ).
The European Union is now considering issues regarding advertising targeted at children as well and whether there should be a European-wide ban or regulation. Responsible advertising for children is at the forefront of pan-European debates and how the advertiser groups should address the threats to the freedom to engage in responsible marketing communications to children both in the European Union and worldwide. Media literacy is another issue wherein how children should be taught to understand and interpret marketing in the context of their daily lives and is widely recognised by regulators, teachers and consumer groups is critical. The importance that is being put on it is on the efficacy and future-proof response to the challenge of protecting minors in a rapidly changing media environment (Advertising and Children).
Subsequently, another challenge is an offshoot of this which is the reinforcing of trust of the empowered consumers. How the advertising industry should position itself more efficiently is the challenge. There is the necessity to improve the way the advertising sector should communicate the positive role and value of advertising in the society; its contribution to the financing of media, to culture, to the sports sector and to the economy as a driver of growth by way of fostering competition, driving lower prices, as well as triggering innovation and employment. The European challenge is also vested on the new EU directive on audio-visual media services that comes with streamlined television advertising rules. To wit, self-regulation has an important role to play in responsible commercial communications where the involvement of media is pivotal (, 2008).
2) Product Placement and Children Product Advertising
Much of the advertising is aimed at children which promotes food, drink, music films and clothing aside from toys and candy. The recent trend, conversely, is on imposing restrictions on advertising that targets children and the most recent campaigns of banning advertising to children under five years of age, specially in Britain. At its simplest, targeting TV advertisements to children is unethical since they cannot distinguish advertising from programming and cannot judge whether an advertisement is misleading. Further, children are not yet able to resist sales pitches (, 2004).
Primarily, children have little or no money of their own and have to persuade their parents to buy products fro them. Instead of advertising directly to parents, companies, encourage children to nag and whine for what they see, honing a behaviour that could lead to bad feeling between children and parents. Advertising that presents products to children as must have is also socially divisive as it makes children whose parents cannot afford the newest fads feel inferior and parents often go into debt to satisfy their children. The latter is especially true when they see certain people using, eating and drinking such products on TV, films, videos and others.
Further, advertisements to children have negative social consequences as commercials encourage gullible children to consume junk food which create obese, unhealthy younger generation. These exploitative advertising also brainwashes children into becoming eager consumers given that commercials are enticing them to be materialistic so that they could associate happiness with purchasing power and the possession of particular goods. However, there remains the fact that restricting advertisement to children will not affect broadcast revenues significantly and so the ongoing fight against targeting children in advertisements ().
Though the product placement proposal could undermine specific children products such as the advertisement of breakfast cereal products, for instance, advertisement still must target not the children per se but the parents without mere jeopardy of the consequences the advertisement will imply for children consumption. The modern commercial concept of cereal food originated in the vegetarian beliefs of American; but nevertheless, these breakfast cereals are often sweetened with sugar, syrup or fruit (to which the amount will depend on the preference of the children); just one of the unhealthy impact of child-targeted advertising (, 2005).
On the other hand, the Office of Communications maintains that “placement is not advertising, clients do not pay by the second nor do they interfere in the creative process, these are seamless integrations of brands within the programming. The main benefit to the client is the opportunity to exploit the association through all the normal advertising, promotional and PR channels.” This is more critical since foods that are increasingly marketed to children through strategic product placement which becomes part of the story or game has a pinch of truth in there and children were encouraged to try products sometimes without the knowledge of their parents (, 2005, ).
Anyhow, what will make the product placement for breakfast cereals to children will be limited by programme genre as codes demonstrate in detail that there will be no placement in children, current affairs and news programming, and the limited air time will be exacerbated by programs like game shows, reality shows and etc that are typically marketed for adult audiences and thus the non-materialisation of product placement of breakfast cereals on these shows. Though breakfast cereals too are marketed to increase the market share by expanding the image of the average cereal eaters to include adults in addition to children who eat cereals at a time other than breakfast, the creation of scenarios that will feature breakfast cereals product on programs like soap operas will require much creative prerogative if not to sacrifice the quality of the show ( and , ).
Embedding products on programming other than breakfast cereals raise questions on the ethical credibility of the program, not to mention the blurring demarcation between programming and advertising. Such not-so-subtle endorsements by chosen programmes have become a booming business in the entertainment industry despite the fact that “viewers have developed tactics for “tuning out” traditional commercial breaks, including simply leaving the room or fast-forwarding past them using new technologies like digital video recorders” (, 2005). Several consumer groups argue that without prominent disclosure, product placements are nothing more than ‘stealth’ advertisements that are inherently misleading.
The challenge is to determine how much product placement is too much in the eyes of viewers especially for the young audiences who are otherwise have limited facilities to process what they can see or witness on televisions, stating that product placements viewed by children are no different from ordinary advertising (). Product placement is similar to word-of-mouth advertising also as the recent pattern is to draw away from food advertisements on television which occur principally as 30 second commercials within programs directed to children, or within other programs directed at a more general audience into product placement within programs in the film, video or TV program, or placed somewhere conspicuous on the set.
Without the presence of the parents also during conversation or the actual integration of the products as viewed by the children, this could lead to misleading or deceiving children, misinform them and may not contain any information regarding the nutritional value of the product; the last being particularly true through product placement. This leads to conveying the message that those foods as seen on TV in the hand of characters with age same as theirs are encouraging children to the view that what’s good to eat is “good for them”; children are susceptible to advertisements, intentionally or otherwise (, 1992).
3) At the outset, digital channels are designed to be more flexible and efficient than analog television, allowing higher quality images and sound and more programming choices that analog does. In terms of advertisement, as (2003) puts it, as subscriber counts for digital cable services continue to rise, so do the reasons for offering local advertisements on digital channels. The old ways won’t in any way blend with new ways in this digital transition era; as a matter of fact, inserting local advertisements into digital channels will not be the same as inserting local advertisements into analog channels. But even so, digital channels will have a fair share of advertisement revenues as digital channels provide a cost-effective niche for local advertisers, markets and advertising groups. Digital marketing provide a ground for advertisers to promote products and services to reach customers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner. As such, the emergence of of so many digital and satellite channels has opened up the opportunity for brands, products and services or all kinds to get in on the act too. Provided that most new channels have equally ‘niche’ or more defined target markets, advertisers could pay much lesser to reach and influence their desired audience while also adding value to the other parts of the advertising campaign which raise the profile brands moreover. Apart from this, digital channels are new avenues for advertisements emphasises direct selling than subtle brand exposure which could also mean an instant return on investment for advertisers as target audience get to respond more immediately ().
Next, web-based broadcasting include computer-implemented methods of related sources of viewing content, a method which include the receiver of a user input that specifies a URL address. These addresses correspond to a web page that determines a corresponding television channel and displaying the corresponding television channel. Web-based TV providers or Internet-content providers can control the simultaneous display of web content and TV channels to cause a TV channel to be displayed when a particular web page is viewed aside from display as a web content screen based on a specific TV channel’s status. Through the process, the Internet-based TV provider can change the format of the web content screen based on the availability, or lack thereof, of a feature tuned channel. In addition, web-based TVs have methods comprising of selecting for display an advertisement and selecting for display an advertisement hot spot based on the corresponding selected television channel. The choice of advertisements also corresponds to the text/graphic template selected and based on the corresponding selected channel. In the case that the channel is not available, the advertisements may be designed so that they do not rely on viewing the channel to provide context for the product promoted. The choice of the extent of display of information is also available for web-based TVs through feature tuned channel, making possible the abbreviation of the international content of the advertisement. As a result, advertisement space usage and efficiency are enhanced while also giving the viewer enough information of the products to have made a purchase decision. Therefore, the purchasing-inclined viewer would be interested in learning how to purchase the product, and less interested in seeing repetitive information about the product (, 2004).
Finally, consumers are increasingly being able to video record programmes they desire. Digital video recorders (DVR) or personal video recorders (PVR) are the most commonly used commercial skipping devices since they enable anyone to record video in a digital format to a disk drive or other medium within the device. These devices are equipped with time shifting features much more convenient, and also allows for “trick modes” such as pausing live TV, instant replay of interesting scenes, chasing playback where a recording can be viewed before it has been completed and skipping advertising (, 1999). Further, VCR enabled viewers to record television programs onto magnetic tape encased in a user friendly format, the videocassette. While recording, consumers could press the pause button during commercial breaks to omit advertisements and resume recording once the program began again. In addition, while playing the tape, viewers could skip through portions of the program, including commercials, using the VCR’s fast-forward functionality.The application of commercial skipping devices is in heat of debates, asking manufactures to disable the ad-skipping features since most of the industry relies on selling advertisements especially since commercial skipping is the second most important thing people are looking for from a DVR (, 2006).
From a personal standpoint, it is clear that the convergence of Internet with television, the growth of wireless communication and the increasing use of digital video recorders provides new challenges for advertisers apart from offering new avenues. The digital age has brought an even more efficient way to record and replay television, and with it, more efficient ways to skip through commercials. The viewership of the audience had also experience a dramatic change whereby the audience holds greater control on their programming preferences. As the new technology begins to incorporate certain features on the consumers’ devices, they also implicitly provided them the decision to skip advertisements for all they want without realising that what they are doing could be equated to the decline of profitability of the advertising industry because it offers convenience. Aside from commercial skipping, devices are also endowed with other features that allow them to schedule and even restart programs at their desire and the personalisation of programming principally targeted at advertisements.
References
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