I remember the days when Youtube didn’t have ads before airing your music videos. As I waited patiently for 25 seconds to pass before I could listen to the song I wanted to listen to, I thought about the time when ads were things you only saw on the television set. The most amazing thing isn’t how ads have been able to infiltrate almost every social outlet that we’re on- from Youtube to Facebook to Instagram, but rather how we have been able to adjust accordingly. Some Youtube videos allow us to watch or listen for around 10 seconds until we’re allowed to hit skip and some require us to watch the entirety of the video. The truth of the matter is, the ads in the former have been designed in such a way that by the time you’re able to hit skip you’ve already heard something about the product that is of interest. So whether we want to admit it or not, we are seeing the ads that are being produced for us; whether they’re for 10 seconds, 25, or several minutes, these ads have been produced with our gender, race, and sexuality in mind. As I went onto Youtube to watch a Brian McKnight video I had to sit through what I thought would be another boring 25 second advertisement. Because I was ready to engage with a piece of music that I loved, my guard was down as to what was being presented to me. The ad turned out to be a dove ad about loving yourself and finding beauty in your flaws and I fell absolutely in love with the ad. When I went shopping the other day I realized that I subconsciously reached for the Dove soap without thinking twice because that’s how much their message had resonated with me in the short 25 seconds. So I thought to myself…why was the Dove commercial right before a Brian McKnight commercial? I realized that the placement of the advertisement was both strategic and calculated. The viewers of Brian McKnight videos are women and it is also women who make up most of the consumer makeup of this country. What we might find to be subconscious or accidental has actually been planned for to the tee.
1 Comment
Your post really resonated with me because I was recently interviewing a friend of mine who had an internship last summer working for the very companies that target us with ads; he helped with their programming. I was startled to hear straight from the source that these companies really do target us with ads. In fact, they know a lot more about us than we might realize - age, shopping preference, websites recently visited, location.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2015
Categories |