Unethical Ads in Online Advertising

All media faces ethical issue. When it comes to advertising, many people would think advertisement has been over promoting on products and brand image despite of the actual quality. It is so call unethical but this is the fact that happens in our daily life. People are losing trust on the advertisements and often doubt about the statement claimed. It causes negative impact on products and brand. Same thing happens to Online Advertising.

Pop-ups, Pop-unders, and Fake Dialogue Boxes can be consider unethical. The pop-up ad which appears in a small window in front of the main browser window and the pop-under which appears behind the main browser window forces user to see it. It would be there until they close that window. Therefore, advertisers may be hoping that users will accidentally click on the window while attempting to close it and thus be taken to the advertiser's site. Although Pop-ups and Pop-unders are widely used in online advertising, both risk irritating the potential customer.

Pop ups becomes the most hated advertising technique according to the research. Most people use to block them although these ads have a high click-through rate. However, most of those clicks may happen when people try to close the window. Pop ups may work for content, but are not well-accepted for ads.

Besides that, there are fake dialogue boxes ads that look like the system messages from your computer can be found in most web site.It is a gray rectangles that pop up on your screen with a message and an "OK" button. It gives the wrong perception to user by clicking "OK" it will close the window but it actually links to the advertiser's web site. This would make users feel cheated and has percieve all related ads are fake.

"There’s nothing good that’s going to come from that approach," says Neil Hair, an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has researched on people's perceptions of online ads. "You’ll just make people mad. … It’s just destroying your image longer term." Younger people especially react negatively to those types of ads, he says.

These are just a few examples of unethical ads. There are more examples that will be discussed on the next post. You are welcome to leave your comment about this topic.

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