Online Advertising

794 Words2 Pages

Online Advertising
Hypothesis
Advertising is a subject that we are all experts in, whether we realize it or not, as consumers. We are bombarded with huge amounts of advertisements on a daily basis in all different forms, most of which we have no way to avoid. Some types of advertisements can more effectively force their messages across than others. It’s not easy to ignore a billboard or newspaper ad, but it’s feasible to avoid at least some online ads. Being constantly overloaded with ads is overwhelming to most people and makes them want to limit the number of ads that they are exposed to on a daily basis. Most people dislike Internet advertising and will usually avoid it if possible.
Method
This study was tested by means of an email interview. The interview was distributed to four participants. Each participant was chosen for their comfort level using the Internet on a computer, smart-phone, or both. It was necessary to choose participants who browsed the internet frequently enough that they would come in contact with lots of ads on a daily basis and form an opinion on them. They also needed to be knowledgeable enough about computers to know how to block or limit ads in some way if they had the desire to. The participants for the study were picked fairly randomly otherwise. A random sampling of people was chosen so that the answers received would be as varied as possible for the sample size.
The interview itself consisted of five questions (Appendix A) designed to evaluate the participants’ opinions of online advertising and to find out how they interact with ads. The questions tried to determine whether or not the participants enjoyed clicking the ads and interacting with them or if they had a negative view of ...

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...ifference in the overall data.
It seems like Internet advertising could be more effective if marketers could find a way to gain public trust. A fair amount of the negativity towards online ads has to do with the fact that people expect to get scammed in some way if they even click an ad. Michelle Hadady summed it up well saying that she won’t give out her email address online because “… then you get spammed” (Hadady). It only takes falling for a scam one time for people to smarten up about not providing any personal information unless it’s somewhere trusted. The more sketchy advertisers will continue to prey on people who aren’t as computer-literate. It seems like if you lower your guard for too long on the Internet something bad is always bound to happen. As far as online ads go, usually it’s safest to just ignore them.

Works Cited

Interviews from people

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