By Rachel Zarrell
On average, a person sees 3,000 to 5,000 ads on a single day, said Jay Mulki, assistant professor in marketing.
Referred to as “advertising clutter,” the number of ads is so great that most people have become “immune” to them, he said.
“The challenge advertisers have is to get you to notice them,” Mulki said. “Once the interest is aroused and the person looks for more information, that can transform [into] desire for that product.”
Media, like television and newspaper advertising, are rapidly losing money from companies, said assistant professor in marketing Gloria Barczak. A shift is occurring, she said, and advertisers have turned to a broader, more profitable medium, which is prime for getting at students: the Internet.
Advertising in the virtual world is boundless. Advertisers have had to find a way to hone in on certain consumer demographics. This is where Facebook, Gmail and other high-traffic websites come into play.
“Social networking is a very big thing today in terms of marketing. One of the great advantages of the Internet is you can get information about who the users are. You can really target your messages to particular kinds of people,” Barczak said.
Many advertisers “target market” on sites by using personal information collected from a user’s e-mail inbox or profile to display advertisements that pinpoint personal interests.
Gmail and Facebook, both free websites, use target marketing to increase the likelihood of their ads being clicked by patrons.
“Marketing is effective when you know or you identify what the needs and wants [of your market] are and then come up with an offering that matches the needs,” Mulki said.
The goal for advertisers is to spark the interest of consumers and attempt to cater to their interests. If the ad doesn’t interest users, there’s little likelihood they will click it.
“It’s like opening a box. Once you open a box there are two more boxes inside. And you keep on opening them because they take you deeper and deeper into this zone,” Mulki said. “Ultimately they hope you buy some products or services from that particular website.”
Some students said they are uncomfortable with the targeted advertisements, and worry about what their private information is being used for.
Dominick Biocchi, a junior music industry major and Gmail user, said he thinks target marketing is not only “inevitable,” but getting worse.
“It’s scary sometimes that [your information] is that trackable, but I clean stuff off my computer a lot so it doesn’t happen as often,” Biocchi said. “I think they should use information according to where people go, what they look for, what they buy, but not their personal e-mails.”
Although taking personal information may seem to be crossing a privacy line, what the advertisers are doing is legal, said Wendy Seltzer, assistant law professor. The practice would be illegal if the company said it would keep personal information private, but didn’t, or lied about their activities, she said.
“If they don’t make any kind of promise to you, and show you ads, there’s very little the law does about that,” Seltzer said.
Yet some student users of these sites don’t mind the ads, and even prefer the target marketing to old-fashioned advertisements.
“If I have to look at advertisements I’d rather they be directed toward me,” said Rachel Green, a freshman psychology major. “I’d rather just not have any advertisements or any of that nonsense
