Online Advertising: Crash Course Media Literacy #7

Summary

This episode of Crash Course Media Literacy delves into the evolution of advertising from traditional to online platforms. It explores how the internet, smartphones, and cookies have transformed the way ads target consumers, moving from broad demographic targeting to personalized addressable advertising. The script discusses the implications of data tracking on privacy and how it shapes the content we see, including sponsored content and recommendation engines. It also highlights the importance of being aware of what information we share online and the potential risks of not reading terms and conditions, as they often contain clauses that allow the selling of user data to third parties.

Takeaways

• 🛍️ Online advertising techniques have evolved from traditional methods to highly targeted and personalized ads that follow users around the web.
• 📱 The advent of the internet, smartphones, and social media has enabled advertisers to track user behavior more closely than ever before.
• 📊 Pre-internet advertising was less precise, relying on broad demographic targeting and the hope of reaching the right audience through contextual ads.
• 🔗 The transformation of ads into clickable links allowed advertisers to measure effectiveness through click-through rates, a significant shift from previous methods.
• 🍪 Web cookies have given advertisers the ability to track users across different websites, creating detailed profiles of their habits and preferences.
• 🎯 Addressable advertising, or behavioral targeting, allows ads to be tailored to very specific user segments, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
• 👀 Users often unknowingly consent to data collection through not fully reading Terms of Service or Privacy Policies when signing up for online services.
• 📉 The broad and general nature of traditional ads has given way to more niche and specific advertising, which can be more appealing but also more intrusive.
• 🕵️‍♂️ Users should be aware of sponsored content and the blurred lines between editorial and advertising, which can influence what information they are exposed to.
• 🚫 The potential for data misuse is significant, with personal information being sold to third parties and the risk of privacy breaches.
• ⚠️ Users are advised to be vigilant about their online privacy, limiting the information they share and being cautious about the terms and conditions they agree to.
• 🌐 While it's challenging to completely avoid online tracking, being aware and proactive about privacy settings and the information one shares can help protect personal data.

Q & A

What is the concept of 'window shopping' described in the script?

Window shopping refers to the activity of looking at items displayed in store windows without necessarily intending to purchase them, essentially browsing through products.

How has online advertising evolved from traditional advertising methods?

Online advertising has evolved by becoming more personalized and targeted. Unlike traditional advertising which was broad and contextual, online ads can track user behavior, use cookies to follow users around the web, and serve ads based on individual preferences and habits.

What is a web cookie and how does it relate to online advertising?

A web cookie is a small piece of data stored on a user's device by websites and apps. It tracks the user's online activity and reports back to advertisers, allowing them to understand user habits and serve targeted ads.

What is the term used to describe the specific targeting of ads to individuals based on their online behavior?

This practice is called addressable advertising or behavioral targeting, which allows ads to be tailored to specific demographics or user interests.

How does the script illustrate the transition from broad demographic targeting to more personalized ad targeting?

The script uses the example of advertisers moving from targeting broad groups like 'teenagers' or 'business professionals' to being able to target very specific groups, such as '18-24 year old women with an interest in science who live in Brazil'.

What are some of the early forms of online advertising mentioned in the script?

Early forms of online advertising mentioned include display ads, pop-up ads, and animated ads, which were attempts to capture attention in a manner similar to print or TV advertising.

How do recommendation engines on platforms like Amazon or Netflix function as a form of advertising?

Recommendation engines suggest products or content based on user history and preferences, effectively promoting certain items over others and subtly influencing user choices.

What is sponsored content and how does it blend with non-commercial information?

Sponsored content is paid promotional material that can appear in various forms, such as social media posts or articles. It often blends with original content by using similar styling and placement, making it less obvious as an advertisement.

Why is it important to be aware of 'sponsored content' and similar terms when consuming online media?

Being aware of sponsored content is important because it helps consumers distinguish between genuine recommendations and paid promotions, allowing for more informed decision-making.

What advice does the script give regarding privacy and sharing personal information online?

The script advises being vigilant about the information shared online, minimizing personal data given to websites and apps, using dummy email addresses when necessary, and being cautious of 'free' services as they often come at the cost of user attention and data.

What is the role of 'Terms and Conditions' or 'Terms of Service' in relation to user data and privacy?

Terms and Conditions or Terms of Service outline the rules for using a service and often include clauses that allow companies to collect, use, and potentially sell user data for targeted advertising and other purposes.

Outlines

00:00

🛍️ Online Advertising and Consumer Tracking

This paragraph discusses the evolution of advertising from traditional methods to online techniques. It starts with a scenario of a hat seemingly following you around stores, illustrating how online ads can appear persistently across different websites. The script then contrasts the old days of advertising, where stores couldn't track consumer habits, with the current digital age where online activities are monitored and targeted ads are served based on browsing history. The introduction of the internet, smartphones, social media, and cookies has transformed advertising into a highly personalized and intrusive practice. The paragraph also explains how traditional ads were broad and based on demographics, but with the advent of the internet, advertisers can now target very specific groups, a practice known as addressable or behavioral advertising.

05:02

📑 Terms of Service and Privacy Concerns

The second paragraph delves into the implications of online terms and conditions, highlighting that most users do not read these agreements thoroughly. It uses Instagram as an example to point out that while the platform has rules against explicit content and illegal activities, it also reserves the right to terminate accounts without warning and retain access to user content. The paragraph explains how users inadvertently grant companies extensive rights to their content and data through these terms, which can then be used or sold for targeted advertising. It also touches on the broader issue of privacy and how our casual attitude towards accepting terms and conditions can lead to vulnerabilities, such as foreign influence in elections. The script warns about the potential misuse of personal information and the importance of being aware of what we agree to when using online services.

10:05

🕵️‍♂️ Navigating the Digital Landscape and Protecting Privacy

The final paragraph offers advice on how to be more media literate and protect one's privacy in the digital age. It suggests learning to distinguish between genuine content and sponsored material, which can be identified by terms like 'sponsored content' or 'advertorial.' The script emphasizes the importance of recognizing that free online services often come at the cost of personal data and attention. It encourages users to review their online profiles for privacy settings, disable unnecessary location and microphone access, and be cautious about sharing personal information. The paragraph concludes by acknowledging the difficulty of completely disconnecting from the internet but stresses the need for vigilance and minimizing personal information shared online. It also hints at the role of organizations and policies in regulating the power of tech giants and the importance of being informed about these issues.

Keywords

💡Window Shopping

Window shopping refers to the activity of browsing items in a store without the intention to buy, simply enjoying the view of displayed products. In the context of the video, it is used metaphorically to describe the online experience where users' browsing habits are tracked and advertisements follow them across different websites.

💡Advertising Techniques

Advertising techniques are methods used by marketers to promote products or services. The video discusses the evolution of these techniques, particularly how they have become more sophisticated online with the use of tracking technologies and targeted ads.

💡Traditional Advertisements

Traditional advertisements are marketing messages delivered through conventional media such as television, radio, and print. The script contrasts these with online ads, noting that traditional ads are contextual and reach broad audiences without the ability to track individual consumer behavior.

💡Internet and Smartphones

The internet and smartphones are central to the video's discussion on how advertising has changed. These technologies have enabled more personalized and intrusive forms of advertising, as they allow for the collection and analysis of vast amounts of user data.

💡Geolocation

Geolocation is the process of identifying the geographical location of a device, which can be used to serve location-based advertisements. The video mentions geolocation as one of the technologies that allow advertisers to follow users' movements and preferences more closely online.

💡Cookies

Cookies are small data files stored on a user's device by websites to track browsing activity. In the video, cookies are described as a tool that allows advertisers to monitor users' online behavior and serve them targeted ads based on their interests and habits.

💡Addressable Advertising

Addressable advertising is a method where ads are tailored to specific individuals based on their online behavior and demographic information. The script explains how this form of advertising is more precise than traditional methods, allowing for highly personalized marketing.

💡Data Breadcrumb Trails

Data breadcrumb trails refer to the digital traces left behind by users as they interact with online platforms. The video uses this term to illustrate how every online action contributes to a profile that advertisers can use to target users with specific ads.

💡Terms and Conditions

Terms and conditions are the legal agreements between a service provider and its users, outlining the rights and responsibilities of both parties. The script highlights how users often blindly accept these terms, which can include permissions for companies to use and share their personal data.

💡Sponsored Content

Sponsored content refers to material that is paid for by an advertiser and published to promote a product or service, often in a way that is not immediately recognizable as an advertisement. The video describes how this type of content can be subtle and blend in with non-commercial content, making it harder for users to identify as promotional.

💡Recommendation Engines

Recommendation engines are algorithms that suggest products or content based on a user's previous behavior and preferences. The script points out that while these seem helpful, they can also limit exposure to a narrow range of options chosen by corporations.

💡Privacy

Privacy refers to the state or condition of limited access to a person's data, personal life, or information. The video discusses the trade-off between convenience and privacy, noting that many online services are 'free' in exchange for users' personal information and attention.

Highlights

The concept of window shopping and how online browsing habits are tracked.

Traditional advertising methods such as TV commercials and billboards were limited in their ability to track consumer behavior.

The advent of the internet and smartphones revolutionized advertising by enabling tracking and personalized ads.

Early internet ads were similar to print or TV, but the introduction of clickable ads allowed for direct tracking of consumer interest.

Web cookies enable websites to track user behavior across the web, providing detailed insights into consumer habits.

Addressable advertising or behavioral targeting allows for highly specific ad targeting based on user data.

Examples of how platforms like YouTube use cookies to display personalized ads and recommended videos.

The role of IP addresses and device identifiers in tracking user behavior and preferences online.

The ethical considerations of data tracking and the potential invasion of privacy.

How terms and conditions often contain clauses that allow companies to use and sell user data.

The implications of data tracking on content visibility and how it can limit user options.

Sponsored content and its blending with editorial content, making it difficult for users to distinguish between ads and regular information.

Strategies for users to protect their privacy and minimize the amount of personal information shared online.

The importance of understanding that 'free' online services often come at the cost of user attention and data.

The role of organizations and policies in regulating the power of large tech companies in data tracking and privacy.

A call to action for users to be vigilant about their online privacy and the information they share.

Transcripts

Have you ever been window shopping?

Just looking in the windows of stores...browsing?

Did anything from the store ever just...follow you around?

You’re browsing for a new hat and see one you like, but pass it by.

Then in the video game store next door the hat is just...sitting on the shelf?

And in the clothing store after that.

Looking at you.

Following you.

Last episode we talked about advertising, and the long history of techniques for getting

us to buy things.

In today’s episode, we’re looking at what happens when those techniques move online,

where you might be followed much more than you think.

In the olden days, before online shopping, stores didn’t know what you were looking at.

They couldn’t track your shopping habits and then place advertisements for stuff you

like wherever your went.

Hats were just hats; they couldn’t follow you around.

Traditional advertisements were contextual, they were put in specific places – or contexts

– where advertisers expected people to be.

Commercials during must-see TV, billboards along traffic-filled highways, pages in popular

magazines.

Places with lots of eyes and people with nothing else to do.

Advertisers had to jam all of the persuasive techniques and logical fallacies they could

into expensive ads, and then HOPE the right people would see.

But that was before the internet.

And smartphones.

And social media.

And geolocation and cookies and pop-up ads and ad blockers and…

Yeah.

It’s about to get scary.

[Theme Music]

Old-timey advertisers didn’t know who would see their ads, and they also didn’t really

know how well they were doing.

Put up an ad for soda right by a high school, and maybe they’d have a rough idea of who

walked by it everyday.

But they wouldn’t know how many kids actually bought soda.

It wasn’t a total guessing game, but it wasn’t a science, either.

Because of this, advertisers targeted different groups of people, or demographics: teenagers,

older men and women, business professionals, families, white people, black people, Asian people.

Still, these groups are pretty broad.

You could place an ad with a TV show that drew mostly female viewers or a radio program

that had mostly teen listeners, but you couldn’t get too specific.

So, ads had to be broad, too, and the products being sold were incentivized to be one-size

fits all.

Anything too niche for a wide audience couldn’t afford to spend money on big, broad advertising.

Since the birth of mass media, advertisers have been looking for better ways to do this,

to make sure their ads hit just the right people.

Enter: the internet.

In the early days of the internet, the ad world, was still just like print or TV advertising.

Ads were created to reach as broad an audience as possible.

First came display ads – and like print ads, they’d just sit there on your screen.

And quickly advertisers tried to gussy these up: pop-ups (the worst) and animated ads.

Everything to get attention.

But the real innovation was turning ads into links.

What happens when an Ad is a Link?

It’s convenient.

See an ad for a hat.

Click.

Bam – you’re at hatstore.com.

But that also means hatstore.com can COUNT how many times that link was clicked.

Advertisers no longer had to estimate how many eyes saw their ads or what they did in

response.

And for a while, the click-through was an unstoppable measurement tool.

This brings us to: the web cookie, which made these ads even stronger.

Cookies are like little breadcrumbs that websites and apps place on your device.

They follow you around the web and report back on your habits.

Suddenly advertisers could track who was clicking on those ads and where they’d go next.

Did they browse the site?

Did they download a coupon?

Did they – [gasp] – buy something??

They could figure out who those viewers were, their shopping habits, and even what their

life was like.

Pre-cookie, advertisers put their targets – that’s you – in pretty broad demographic

buckets, but now they could narrow that immensely.

Ads can target just 18-24 year old women with an interest in science who live in Brazil

or 34-45 year old men who like soccer in Canada.

This is called addressable advertising, sometimes referred to as behavioral targeting.

Take a look around this video.

Are you seeing any ads?

If so, are they things you’re interested in?

That might be because YouTube is using cookies to display what it thinks you want to see.

Your recommended videos work that way, too.

Every time you use your phone or computer, you’re leaving data breadcrumb trails.

The websites you visit log your IP address a unique set of numbers used to identify your

computer as you browse the web.

There are other kinds of unique identifiers, too.

They can track what kind of device you’re using, where you are, how fast your internet

is, who else you follow.

All kinds of stuff.

You may be thinking, “Isn’t getting better music recommendations and seeing actually

relevant ads worth a few cookie crumbs?”

The problem is, the websites and apps you do trust to use your data trails don’t keep

it to themselves.

Let’s take a deeper look at this in the Thought Bubble.

When you open up a new app or website, or login to a social network, you’ll often

come across some Terms and Conditions.

Sometimes they’re called Terms of Service.

These are the rules of the road.

The company is telling you what you can and can’t do in the app – like use it to commit

a crime, or share stolen work.

But they’re also telling you what they will and won’t do.

Most of the time when we create a new account like this, we just check the box to accept

the terms and conditions and move on.

But companies know we don’t read those ridiculous documents.

Research even shows it would take us 25 days each year to read all the things we agree

to.

So, more often than not, we’re actually consenting to a lot of stuff we probably wouldn’t

if we actually read the darn thing.

For example: Instagram.

You think you’re using an app to share photos with friends and chat with them.

The app’s Terms of Use say:

You can’t post sexually explicit, violent, hateful, or discriminatory things on Instagram.

You can’t steal someone else’s login, or use your account for illegal purposes.

They have a right to kick you out if you break the rules, like spamming or threatening others

or stealing someone else’s photos.

Ok, that makes sense.

But their Terms of Use also say

If they do want to kick you out, they can do so without warning.

And afterwards all of your photos and data and comments will no longer be accessible

through your account.

Despite their Community guidelines, they say they have no official obligation to take down

any Instagram content.

They don’t own your content, but you DO grant them a “non-exclusive, fully paid

and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license” to use your content.

In other words, they could use your photos however they want, including selling them

to third parties.

Doing so would be a big breach of trust, so they probably wouldn’t.

But they could.

They use analytics tools that collect information sent by your device, including the web pages

you visit.

And they may use “device identifiers” on your phone to track your browsing habits

to serve you personalized content or ads.

With Instagram or any app you use, with the right clause hidden in all that legal jargon,

your info can be sold to third parties, over and over again.

Then, advertisers can sell you more, better targeted ads.

So when you absent mindedly check the box to accept god-knows-what terms and conditions,

you’re often also signing away your right to privacy.

Right now, that info mainly goes to advertisers, but you can see how our ambivalent attitude

around privacy could make us vulnerable to bad actors.

Or, say foreign influence on things like...you know...presidential elections.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

Data tracking isn’t just used to serve you personalized ads, either.

It can actually determine what kind of content you see elsewhere.

When we browse Amazon or Netflix, they provide us with suggestions based on stuff we’ve

already seen.

These recommendation engines, in a way, are advertisements.

It’s showing you one show or product over another and, by extension, hiding others.

The companies that use them certainly say they’re just being helpful.

But these can actually limit our options, and keep us boxed into the things big corporations

want us to see.

There are many different kinds of these low-key ads.

But two really common ones are easy to overlook.

The first is sponsored content.

Sponsored content can mean anything from an Instagram post to a documentary, that an advertiser

paid to make and publish.

It may not be obviously selling anything – like an article about taking care of your car,

but paid for by a car company with its logo at the top.

Or it’s that weird list of outlandish, tabloid-y articles at the bottom of a more reputable

site – like “you’ll never believe how they died” with a picture of a celebrity

who is definitely alive.

These are particularly hard to pick out, because publishers like your favorite magazines and

websites, will place them alongside their own original stuff, the editorial content,

so they blend in.

First: Learn to distinguish between ads and non-commercial information.

Look for phrases like “sponsored content” “native content” “advertorial” or

“presented by brand name here.”

Celebrities and media creators may say they’re “partnering” with a brand – that means

they’ve getting money to promote that brand.

Even when you Google, scope out the tiny green “ad” in a listing that shows they paid

to be at the top of the list.

Second: if nothing else, remember this: when something is free, you’re the product.

If you’re sitting through ads to watch a video, or scrolling past them on Instagram,

that’s the price you pay to share photos and make vlogs shipping Kate Winslet and Leonardo

DiCaprio IRL.

Check through all your online profiles and see how much info you’re giving away.

Head to the settings on your phone and turn off geolocation features and microphone access

wherever you can.

And next time you create an account, think twice about handing over any personal info.

Create a dummy email address for that stuff if you have to.

Finally, know that nothing ever goes away online.

Sure, the internet may forget about your embarrassing photos and Snaps may “disappear,” but

when you’re online, you’re being tracked.

It sounds scary because it is.

The best way to navigate this hyper-targeted media environment would be to, well, log off.

Forever.

But we know you’re not going to do that, that’s why you’re here with us today.

The next best thing is to be hyper vigilant about what information you share online and

minimize it whenever you can.

Be wary of anything that seems free, because chances are you’re paying for it with your

attention and your life story.

Right now, the biggest internet and tech companies make the rules, and we all follow along because

we don’t like to read long legal documents.

But, with any new technology, there are organizations and policies that try to reign in the power

of big players like Facebook and Google.

Sometimes they’re successful, and sometimes...not so much.

We’re going to learn all about that next time on Crash Course Media Literacy.

Until then, I’m Jay Smooth.

See ya!

Crash Course Media Literacy is filmed in the Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney Studio in Missoula, MT.

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Cafe.

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