Advertising and the Internet

 Advertising and the Internet

In previous columns I have briefly mentioned the upcoming legal battles between Google  and Facebook versus the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which  “is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States.” (Wikipedia). 

These multi-state lawsuits are aided by the research of Dina Srinivasan who found that “Facebook harmed consumers by extracting more and more personal data for using its free services” and that “Google’s monopoly in advertising technology allowed for the type of self-dealing and insider trading that would be illegal on Wall Street.” She alleges that  Google violates Federal antitrust law by controlling every part of the digital advertising pipeline and used it to give priority to its own services, acting as “pitcher, batter and umpire, all at the same time”. (from Business Day magazine, “An Industry Exile Shapes The Case Against Big Tech”  by Daisuke Wakabayashi.)

The lawsuit against  Facebook which  is being investigated by the The Federal Trade 

Commission centers on Facebook buying up rivals to illegally crush the competition as well as violating users' privacy.  In 2014 Facebook admitted that it would start tracking the behavior of users across the Internet so that it’s ads could be targeted more precisely and Srinivasan recalls thinking, “Who the heck consents to having a company track them across the internet... they could only do it because they had monopoly power to do something that clearly goes against consumer interests.” (ibid.)

After reading Wakabayashi’s article, I realized how little I knew about Advertising. I was aware of the purpose of advertising: to convince a buyer to give money to a seller for the purchase of a commodity such as a TV or an automobile. Although one could argue that definition is not broad enough to describe political ads, the idea of convincing is central to both.  Another way to look at it is: Advertising is the price we pay to access what appears to be free media content. This insight was succinctly stated by Bruce Schineier in the 2010 Time Magazine as:

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re Facebook’s customer, you’re not – you’re the product. Its customers are the advertisers.”

I wanted to know more about the history of advertisement --- When and Where was the first ad made and how has it evolved from cave paintings to the Internet?  So I did what any contemporary person would do: I searched (on Google) on the phrase, “history of advertising”. I learned from Wikipedia that advertising was not a new phenomenon. As far back as 3000 BC, Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters --- and our word “paper” is derived from the Greek  “papyrus”. Once you have paper and a written language,you have a powerful way to communicate messages and advertising is all about messaging. All you need next is the invention of movable type and the printing press(Gutenberg circa 1440 AD) to help fuel the Renaissance .

 

“During the  Middle Ages, the  general populace was unable to read, instead of signs that read "cobbler", "miller", "tailor", or "blacksmith" would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers. “ (Wikipedia)

The twentieth century burst with new media for delivering advertisements. The term “media” (plural for “medium” ), is the way information is communicated as well as the content or message. From Wikipedia we learn, “The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1964. McLuhan proposes that a communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study.” After a quick search on the Internet for sources which define the different types of media, all seem to agree with the four categories:  Newspaper, Radio, Television, and  Internet but one could certainly add Letters, Fax and Billboards to the list.

And, if one is of a certain age, they could add: Two tin cans connected by a string.