The Ethics Of Online Advertising

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Unless your Adblock is tuned well, online advertising seems to be an inherent addition to almost every major website the one might think of. After moving from other mediums to the World Wide Web, ads still carry out the same function - they try to persuade, challenge or make a bond - anything to sell the product or service. And even after changing so many forms, contents and platforms, they still bring up the questions of ethics and morality, which become even more tricky following the growth of new nontraditional media (Drumwright & Murphy, 2009) coded with zeros and ones into our wired devices.
The ethics of advertising has been defined as “what is right or good in the conduct of the advertising function. It is concerned with questions of …show more content…

Prahalad in her article. Indeed, if consumers find the brand or the ad failing to create trustworthiness, it might affect their intention to purchase the product (Jarvenpaa et al, 2000). “Why people don’t trust ads? Because advertising is seen as deliberately manipulative; its definitive goal is to increase sales, which means separating people from their money. Under this view, advertising is deceitful, impersonal, and it has no value.” concludes Jayson DeMers, empirically supported by Edelman Trust Barometer 2017 which has shown the global record-breaking crisis of people’s certainty about almost all existing …show more content…

Aristotle regards ethics as a complex emotional, rational and social process. Therefore, his philosophy combines morality in the “golden middle”, which in this case shall translate into benefit for both – extension of my publication’s life and a new useful piece of information for my audience. As an optimal decision, I would advertise for the cause that I actually do support, try to look for sponsors that would like to invest into my ideas, without actually contradicting my primary worldview and key principles of my publication. Moreover, such tactics seem to be beneficial for the business too. Multiple shopping behavioral studies (Cone Inc. 2006, 2011, 2015) show that consumers, especially younger ones, in 90% are likely to purchase from companies that are socially responsible and support good

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