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Did you ever feel exhausted and sad, and decided to go on YouTube to watch some funny cat videos? Or have you ever scrolled down your Instagram, while in a waiting room somewhere? Ever stopped to think how amazing it is to be able to enjoy all these services for free? Well, its NOT! You pay for it with your identity. They log everything. The people you are friends with, the videos and pictures you like, the people you interact with, even the words and Hashtags you use. They tend take this information, analyse it and generate a detailed profile of who you are. They log your habits, preferences, then they sell that information to advertisers. You can try to quit one platform; you will always end up with another one. The outreach of these corporations in our lives is deep rooted. Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012 for 1 BILLION dollars, so your information goes to Facebook anyway. Even if you quit all social media ad stick to the basics like WhatsApp, you will still be monitored because guess who bought WhatsApp over for a whopping 19 Billion, dear old Facebook.
Since we can’t truly avoid using social media because let’s be honest we are millennials and we basically grew up with social media and that’s all we know, lets be aware of the different forms of advertising that these platforms offer. We will focus on YouTube and Instagram because advertisers are coming up with new marketing techniques ways everyday. YouTube has a pay-per-view or pay-per-click system that comes from AdSense, Google’s main algorithmic marketing subsidiary. Advertisers only pay when someone clicks an ad or watches for 30 seconds. There are 6 types of ads on YouTube; display ads, overlay ads, and in-stream ads such as the skippable ads, non skippable ads, sponsored cards and not to forget native advertising.
The official AdSense ads; the display ads, overlay ads, skippable ads, non skippable ads and sponsored cards are the easiest to spot. These are ads you can see on top, on the sides and before, after or in the middle of the main video. Display ads are on the right side of the screen. Overlay ads are semi-transparent overlay ads that appear on the main video. The skippable ads and non skippable ads that are inserted before, during, or after the main video. Sponsored cards display content that may be relevant to your video, such as products featured in the video. These are targeted ads that are generated through an algorithm, to a specific demographic. They are the ads that are personalized because of your interests, previous searches and/or simply because you match the description of a certain demographic. For example; you might get a Maybelline ad, because you watch a lot of make up tutorials.
Native advertising, also called sponsored content, is a different form of advertising. It is a phenomenon where paid content takes the form of editorial content from contributors of the platform, which meets audiences’ expectations of content. Sponsored user-generated advertising is one of the most effective brands use to approach citizens. YouTube’s content is sparsed with advertising, product placement and celebrity/expert endorsers giving product reviews, descriptions of products and ways to use them in video blogs as brand have learn to harness YouTubers speaking their minds on the platform. Unfortunately, because of the volatility of the internet as a medium, it is not clearly regulated. It is thus harder to spot the sponsored videos compared to general content. The Buzzfeed channels on YouTube is especially very reliant of this form of advertising.
Now Instagram is no better. Instagram uses Facebook’s very invasive data collection, to target ads to its users. How do you think that did Facebook become the sixth most valuable company in the US, with an estimate of about $350 billion worth in 2016? As per their 2015 statistics, Instagram had 300 million monthly with an average of 70 million photos are uploaded by users every day. Brands and celebrity/ expert endorsers have studied and make the user-generated content platform system work for them in several ways, through advertising banners and native advertising. Instagram is full of endorsed products from celebrity profiles to fitness pages. For example, in 2010, Forbes.com published an article called ‘Reality TV Stars Turned Entrepreneurs’ where they mentioned how Kim Kardashian, a reality television star, skillfully turned her notoriety into a strong business brand. The Kardashian clan have openly admitted that their social media accounts are their marketing tools and countless of examples in the light of the Sugar Bear Hair Vitamins for hair growth can be found.
When we decided that as users we would prefer the services to be free as opposed to paying for the services we use, the websites had to sell ads to make money to sustain themselves. The targets ads to us based on our preferences and online behaviours in order to compensate, which means we are under constant scrutiny when we are online in exchange for using these services for free. We have given up our priceless interest, relationships and privacy the minute we click on that “Accept” in the terms and conditions tab when we opened our accounts. The worst thing is that these platforms not only track us as individuals but our whole networks and fill in the blanks. So we might not have checked in on Facebook but you were tagged in a picture on Instagram on a friend’s profile and Facebook would gather that information as well. So is it worth it to give up your identity to advertisers for free social media?
