The Whole Truth and Nothing But……Or Not?

I keep hearing that consumers demand transparency in advertising campaigns. We don’t want advertising companies to promise us one thing, and end up doing another. What else is new?

Especially with the rise of online advertising and the popularity of using social media to get to the right target group, honesty and transparency become important. Not only consumers want transparency, it’s also what advertisements claim to be nowadays. I’m just wondering how transparent the advertisements really are, and are the consumers as critical as they claim to be?

It crossed my mind when I started the first week of my internship at Qi. This is an online interactive advertising company. For some projects they use Social Media to reach the right target groups.
Advertisements placed on Social Media sites often show up as pop-ups, virtual games, banners etc. We get invited to join a ‘community’ of clients by registering ourselves at the official website. In return you’ll receive for example the weekly newsletter. So we fill in our names, addresses, nationality etc. for their database. This gives them some inside information about their target groups. But before you get some more information about the products they try to sell, you have to get registered so they can stalk you with more information about their products. Personally, I skip that part. Why can’t I just enter the site without doing al that? This way of advertising is even less transparent then traditional marketing like tv/radio/newspaper ads, although they’re striving for more transparency.

Another example is an ad made into a game, like www.eredivise.niveaformen.nl  . Qi launched it just a week ago. It’s all about soccer, because that’s what men might be able to identify themselves with and therefore the website might appeal to them. They lead you to the product through a game, with which you can win tickets for the next soccer game. Also is it possible to show your friends at Facebook you’ve visited the website in the hope your friend would take a look too. This way they try to hide the fact that it’s an ad and make the illusion that they’re doing what’s best for the customers instead of their own.

I personally believe the transparency consumers and agencies are striving for, is a long way off. Ads still try to deceive us through games and pop-ups that for example promise us prices, and obviously a lot of people are still being deceived. I’m just wondering….should ad agencies strive for more genuine methods of bringing a message to customers (like traditional marketing), or should they strive to keep up with the ever-changing advertising and marketing options to reach their goals?