ADVERTISING AND NEW MEDIA; THE PHENOMENON OF DIGITAL CONVERGENCE

ADVERTISING AND NEW MEDIA;

THE PHENOMENON OF DIGITAL 

CONVERGENCE 

Alexandra Starling 
41973143

Digital Media Convergence has ushered in a new era of technologies, created to accommodate multiple services on a single platform or device (Dywer, 2010), allowing many media formats which were previously incompatible to come together in unison, appealing to much wider consumer audiences. It is now becoming harder for advertising to reach the modern consumer, due to the increasing amount of time that consumers spend online, resulting in less time using traditional media (Sheehan and Morrison 2009). Television has been the traditional focus of advertisers and their revenue for decades, however with audiences moving away from television to more easily accessible content of the internet, companies are having to find ways to combat the avoidance of advertisements.  Agreeing with this point, Sheehan and Morrison observe the issue of online television, due to,

...consumers’ increasing use of pull technology such as TIVO and Web–based programs making it possible to avoid commercials aired in a traditional broadcast channel. Advertisers and content providers both seek ways to address this avoidance issue.

(Sheehan and Morrison, 2009)

Digital Media Convergence has affected the industry of advertising and new media to such a degree that companies are now harnessing advertising in a much broader spectrum, focusing their recent efforts towards online viral campaigns, search advertising, YouTube commercials and sponsorship of social networking giants such as Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Bandwagon.
Source: Wordpress

Popular video media site YouTube has accommodated the advertising industry through the fruition of compulsory advertisements, inevitably played at the start of many videos, emulating television advertising, while still allowing viewers to watch the full video free of commercials.

Screen Shot of YouTube advertisement.

Social networking giant Facebook encapsulates the heightening success of advertising through converged media, by giving opportunity to a variety of companies to advertise as "sponsors"- allowing Facebook to continue to run as a free social networking site while still making a profit through the payment of various companies, allowing greater social and economic opportunity.

Screen Shot of Facebook Advertisements

The viral campaign is noted as one of the most recent evolutions in the world of advertising, with major companies such as Samsung, Coca-Cola and Volkswagen realising that for little expense on their part, they could manipulate consumers into marketing their product for them with viral marketing, hoping their audiences will “actively propel them through social networks” (Spurgeon, 2008). Through such viral methods, these companies successfully harnessed modern converged media and re-established a connection with their consumers, even harnessing the use of social media as a testing ground through basing advertising success on the number of “hits”, “likes” and comments. As discussed by Wessles,

Rather than falling into obsolescence, so-called ‘old media’ have embraced new media forms, such as interactive campaigns, to extend the scope and reach of their products.

(Wessles, 2011)

Consumers are less brand-loyal than ever before, paying more attention to the recommendation of friends and family than marketing messages. Thus, traditional advertising is failing in its purpose (Kemp and Kim, 2008). The success of a viral campaign is based on the audience sharing the video with friends. Often in traditional forms of advertising such as television ads, companies must ensure their advertisements are kept short and succinct, however the fruition of online viral campaigns has allowed companies more time and flexibility in the content of their videos. 

For many years, independent artists were hidden away in the shadows, as major companies sought out large advertising agencies to create and distribute high quality advertisements to a large television audience. As the popularity of the internet grew and audiences branched away from following television in its traditional form; the need for high quality video ads has lessened.  Companies are now choosing instead to recruit independent artists to create videos, giving opportunity for lo-fi videos to be distributed globally in a cost effective manner. This can be seen in Samsungs “Extreem Sheep Art” video, which generated a massive 17 million views on YouTube.

Accordingly, it must be noted that it is not only major companies that  are harnessing viral campaigns, with one of the most successfully executed examples being the YouTube based mini series “Will It Blend?” The BlendTec company creatively presents the power, strength and durability of the BlendTec blender by blending popular and expensive brands of electronic goods, creating interesting videos appealing to a wide variety of audiences.  With the use of humorous narration, catchy theme music, and somewhat dramatic content, the videos sky-rocketed in popularity and pushed the BlendTec company to gain more exposure than many other brands on the market. The BlendTec Youtube Channel boasts a massive 424,041 subscribers and a whopping 197,920,508 total video views across their 119 videos. 

Another way in which advertisers have converged with new media is the use of search advertising, in order to accommodate the "fragmented audiences of true niche content online" (Sheehan and Morrison 2009). As Battelle correctly observes,

the internet search engine is perhaps, the single most important development for informational advertising since the time of the first paid newspaper advertisements or the telephone directory. In less than a decade, search engines have transformed into new, globally significant and, increasingly, locally relevant advertising-funded media services and institutions.

(Battelle, 2005)

It appears as though there is no escape from the world of advertising, as search engines harness the information in the users search, providing relevant advertisements in the hopes that the ad will be of more interest to the consumer than a randomly generated, obscure commercial.  As Spurgeon states,

“Search advertisers target search terms rather than consumers.”

(Spurgeon, 2008)

Screen Shot of Google Advertisement

Even Okazaki and Barwise agree with such assumptions,

digital display advertising has grown—and continues to do so—but increasingly it has been overshadowed by search (dominated by Google) and online classified ads.

(Okazaki and Barwise, 2011)

Digital media convergence, though positive for many aspects of changing media, was in the past seen as having a negative impact on particular industries, taking audiences away from print newspapers, magazines and television, allowing media content to be more easily accessible online. Though the movement in the focus of the consumer was seen as somewhat detrimental to the advertising industry, a different light has been cast upon the change in commercial format. Now with the revolution of online viral campaigns, niche advertising and search advertisers, new opportunities have allowed companies to broadcast advertisements to a more relevant audience, with ads viewed upwards of millions of times a day in some instances. This shift in consumer focus has allowed room for companies to advertise more effectively and with more control, and has even revolutionized and created new formats and platforms for companies to successfully reach their target market and audience. 

References:

Battelle, J, (2005), The search. How Google and it's rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture. New York: Penguin Group.

Dwyer, T, (2010), Media Convergence, McGraw Hill, Berkshire


Kemp, MB and Kim, P, (2008), The Connected Agency, Forrester Research (2008; summarized in 
Morrissey 2008b) [online] Available at:
http://www.forrester.com/The+Connected+Agency/fulltext/-/E-RES43875?docid=43875


Sheehan, K. and Morrison, D. (2009) Beyond convergence: Confluence culture and the role of the advertising agency in a changing world. [online]. Available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2239/2121


Shintaro Okazaki and Patrick Barwise, (2011): Has the Time Finally Come for the Medium of the Future? Research on Mobile Advertising. Journal of Advertising Research: Vol. 51, No. 1. Available at: http://www.warc.com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/Content/ContentViewer.aspx?MasterContentRef=a942cd09-d812-4d82-95c1-b375795397ca&q=convergence


Spurgeon, C. (2008) Advertising and New Media. Oxon: Routledge. pp.24-45.

Wessles, Emanuelle (2011) Convergence, 'Where were you when the monster hit? Media convergence, branded security citizenship and the transmedia phenomenon of Cloverfield'  vol 17 no 1 pp 69 - 83 [online] Available at:
http://con.sagepub.com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/content/17/1/69.full.pdf+html

Video

Will It Blend? - iPhone (2007)  Blendtec (released on July 10, 2007). Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI [Accessed 27th August 2012]. Standard YouTube License. 


Extreme Sheep LED Art (2009) BaaaStuds (released on March 16t, 2009).
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw [Accessed 27th August 2012]. Standard YouTube License. 

Images

Social-media-bandwagon. [photograph] Available at: http://mconvergence.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/social-media-bandwagon1.jpg

Screen shots taken by Alexandra Paula Starling, (2012)