In-Your-Face Advertising

It is easy to say that the connection between advertising and social media is now firmly embedded into society. It used to be difficult to go anywhere without being subjected to some form of advertising, but now it is impossible! We are surrounded by advertising constantly. Think about how many advertisements you see a day. As I sit in the computer lab at the library, I can literally count 100's of advertisements in front of me. Pop labels, coats, computers, cell phones, clothing, not to mention the multiple tabs I have opened on the desktop of my computer with thousands of advertisements screaming, "CLICK ME" inside of them. Oh yeah, and my smartphone just received an Email saying, "Your Playstation Update is available".

We cannot escape the world of advertising. Well, I guess we could lock ourselves inside a basement somewhere, but you couldn't have windows, visitors, gadgets, and certainly not television. Our inability to control the amount of advertising we take-in leaves me with a question: Who controls advertising standards? Someone or something must protect the general public from advertisements, right?

The answer is yes. The easiest and most current example of how standards are changing comes from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Even though they are the UK's regulator of advertising, their recent actions are a fine example of how advertising standards are changing. According to a March, 2011 fresh business thinking article:

 In a press release, the ASA stated that "The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, which includes rules to make sure advertisements do not mislead, harm or offend, will be applied to all UK based company websites regardless of the sector or size of business or organization.

This means that businesses will need to apply the same standards to the content they distribute on their own site or through social media feeds as they already do to more traditional forms of advertising. We will continue to see these changes in the regulation of advertising. The need for advertising to be regulated increases daily. Without these regulations, we would be constantly (even more than we already are) hit with advertisements. Our lives as we know them would be wasted by exiting pop-ups, deleting texts, and waiting for 30 second advertisements to disappear so we can watch our favorite YouTube clips.

Thank God (or the ASA) for advertising standards and regulations!