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Online Advertisement, Privacy, and Journalism

-- By KjLim - 13 Nov 2017

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to discuss the problems of today's online advertisement and consequences of the increasing popularity of ad blocking software. I will first discuss why online advertisement has become more problematic in the recent days, focusing on its "tracking" practice; I will then discuss how ad blocking software has accordingly gained popularity and native advertisements that circumvent ad-blockers are creating problems. I feel this is an important current issue that has far-reaching implications for privacy and Internet surveillance practices that permeate today’s society.

What's Wrong with Today's Online Ads? Tracking.

Online advertisement has been around for a while. But in my view it recently has become much more problematic than before, and the biggest culprit is the growing use of website visitor tracking. Website visitor tracking is a practice of tracking/monitoring website visitor’s online activities (often even when they leave the site) to create “big data” for advertisers who then use the data to provide “personalized” ads to web visitors. This practice has apparently become prevalent as big data analysis is now a buzzword that attracts advertisers who are looking to exploit the ever-increasing online markets (it is reported that internet advertising revenues in the U.S. has exceeded those of cable television and of broadcast television).

Despite the ironic reality that the click-through rate on such banner ads is reported to be less than 0.1%, more and more websites – including social network services such as Facebook that has access to more personal information than others – are using user tracking. And this is troubling, to say the least. First, this practice clearly is (or should be considered) a form of impermissible Internet surveillance that permeates today’s society because it is generally done without the knowledge/consent of the users, most of who are not tech-savvy and do not understand the consequences of allowing these websites, especially tech giants like Facebook/Google, to monitor their activities. I am also concerned that the prevalence of this tracking practice reflects today’s business leaders’ insensitivity to and us ordinary persons’ ignorance of the importance of privacy and far-reaching implications of surrendering it to big corporations with technology and money that can then use such information to subtly control our lives in troubling ways.

Ad-blockers Fight Back

Fortunately, there has been some successful effort to fight back: ad-blockers that selectively download material when visiting a website, usually excluding advertisements and tracking components. According to Adobe’s 2015 Global Adblocking Report, “there are now 198 million active adblock users around the world … [adblocking] grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months”. A Harvard Business Review article called it “the largest [boycott] in human history”. Ad-blockers have become so popular that the popularity is even sparking ethical discussions on whether it is morally wrong to deprive web publishers of means/opportunities to earn money, which could lead to the decline of journalism in general.

Native Ads and Problems

Against this backdrop, the issue I would like to discuss here is the growing prevalence of native ads that more and more online advertisers are starting to use in response to ad-blockers because they can circumvent the blockers. Native ads are forms of advertisement that match the online platforms’ form and function so as to look like the platform’s content, and some examples can be found here.

Two main problems of native ads I think are: first, it is often difficult for many website users (who I assume are not tech-savvy) to tell if some content is in fact a native ad, creating misleading, if not deceitful, impressions of products the ad is promoting. Second, perhaps more importantly, when it is difficult to tell the difference between journalism and advertisement (because many native ads operate on online publishers websites), it could eventually erode the independence of journalism and, if combined with tracking, the Internet would no longer be a place for content democratization and free exchange of ideas.

In response to criticisms against native advertisements, Meredith Levien, the New York Times’ Executive Vice President for Advertising, insists that “good native advertising respects the independence and the sanctity of journalism…[and] is just not meant to be trickery. It’s meant to be publisher sharing its storytelling tools with a marketer”. She also argues that, because the marketers are held to the same standard consumers hold publishers to (transparency, accountability, etc), native ads can add value to rather than undermine journalism.

I find this incredibly difficult to believe. We already suspect and have some evidence research articles sponsored by companies can bias conclusions in favor of the sponsoring companies’ products, and it is difficult to think that something similar will not happen in journalism and native advertising. Even a 1999 article in the New York Times questioned the viability of maintaining journalism’s independence with the advent of online native ads, and that was almost 20 years ago when online advertisement was not heavily employing tracking and fewer people used the Internet for information gathering.

Concluding Remarks

I have mainly discussed the problems of online advertisements that create privacy issues and threaten the Internet’s (online publishers’) integrity, without discussing solutions. Honestly, I am not sure what solutions there are, especially considering that web publishers’ need to monetize their websites/content is also important; if they can’t do so, we will have fewer and fewer web publishers that can financially survive, threatening the notion of content democratization championed by the web. Nonetheless, a better understanding of the problems should help us find solutions as we move forward.

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