Subliminal Advertising and its Ethical Dimensions in the Social Media Age

This chapter provides an overview of the research on subliminal advertising. Advertising industry experts always look for methods through which to develop effective advertising strategies and to persuade consumers' choices. This chapter shows that in comparison to the research conducted before the 1990s, and with the recent help of new techniques, there has been a growing body of subliminal influence research that has demonstrated that subliminal priming has an influence on a consumer's choices and behaviors. In this chapter whether subliminal advertising can play a critical role in attracting the customer to the product or service is examined. Whether our decisions can be affected by subliminal messages is also investigated. In addition, one of the purposes of this chapter is to explore whether subliminal messaging might raise ethical issues, and whether these issues can lead to moral corruption in society. What is missing is the lack of research on the ethical dimension of subliminal advertising.

Employing a Mixed Method to Explore Mobile Social Media Users' Big Data Privacy Concerns

Since its introduction in the early 21st century, mobile social media have played an indispensable part in contemporary human experiences. The convergence of social networking and mobile technologies and services creates a fascinating circumstance because the pervasive nature of mobile social networking technologies has impacted on users' privacy. The chapter employed a mixed research method to collect and analyze mobile social media users' experiences and privacy concerns in the age of Big Data. A total of 57 participants were included in this study. Collected data was analyzed by examining mobile social media users' experiences and their concerns over privacy. Findings from this study showed the rising concerns over personal privacy as a result of convergence of mobile social media and Big Data practices by the advertising industry. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

The Influence of Perceived Interactivity of Social Media Advertising and Voluntary Self-Disclosure on Attitudes and Intentions to Pass-Along

Social media provide advertisers with opportunities to disseminate advertising and develop relationships with consumers in an interactive environment. To gain an understanding of this current advertising platform, this chapter examines how the perceived interactivity of an ad in social media and consumers' voluntary self-disclosure affect attitude toward an ad, attitude toward a brand, and pass-along intentions. An online experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses and answer the research question. Contrary to the prediction, a highly interactive social media ad was not more effective than a low-interactive one. High voluntary self-disclosure individuals had more favorable attitudes and intentions to pass-along the ad. Theoretical and practical implications for social media advertising are discussed.

Augmented Reality Advertisements in Tourism Marketing

The rapid growth in the use of smart phones and respective mobile applications has created new ways for the tourism industry to market the services to customers. The growing use of smart phones is driving the mobile applications market to be one of the fastest growing media outlets in the history of consumer technology. Augmented reality, or AR, has become one of the new advertising and marketing tool. Many brands use AR to attract customers and to increase customer engagement. AR allows smart phone and tablet computer users to point their phone or tablet cameras at certain objects—be they print advertisement or even coffee cups—that trigger a 3D video. Augmented reality gives businesses opportunity to unexpectedly integrate the digital world with the real world. This chapter presents the profile of AR applications and AR advertisements in the tourism industry.

The Organizational Structure of Advertising Agencies and New Directions

The acceleration of globalization caused transformations in the area of communication, as in many other areas, and innovations brought about by information technologies have diversified operation methods and management, as well as organizational understandings of business companies within the global competition environment. Evolving towards post-modern structuring, companies have gravitated to customer-oriented business management strategies, where companies see their customers and market environment from different angles while conducting their advertising activities. The mass marketing sense, which was effective for a long period of time, was gradually alienated, and particularly with the intense utilization of social media and digital environments, the understanding of personal marketing (which more quickly connects products with their target audiences) was adopted in order to influence customers, who now have a multitude of choices. This chapter focuses on introducing the new organizational structures of advertising agencies in the social media age.

Gamification and Social Media as Tools for Tourism Promotion

The goal of this chapter is to present the application of gamification mechanism and social media tools in the promotion of tourism regions and enterprises as well as the promotion of tourism activity itself. The framework distinguishes between stimulus characteristics of the game (promotion mechanism) that lead to sociological responses toward the game (tourism brand) and actual buyers' (tourists') behaviour. Though the game-like mechanism has been applied in tourism for decades and some funware elements are well known among teens – they hardly deal with competition of computer games. Two popular systems of tourism badges in Poland are thus discussed in order to look for reasons of their falling popularity and teenagers' resistance to participate in the systems. Mobile devices enable teens to combine playing and travelling. The development of mobile applications, integrating social gaming, and location-based technology has led to the growing interest in location-based social network marketing, particularly in tourism and hospitality. The chapter concludes with a proposal how to revitalize an old-school system of tourism badges through the modern gamification mechanism combined with social media tools.

The Use of Myths as an Advertisement Strategy at the Age of Social Media

This chapter has been focused on how the myths, which have a narrative style by using symbols, have been used in the advertising sector. Based on this scope, “the myth” concept is considered within Jung's archetype and collective unconscious approach. The idea that advertising, just like the myths, is based on symbolic structure and archetypes, is analyzed in terms of “Meaning Transfer Model” and consumer behaviour. In the praxis of this study, to support the relationship between the myth and the commercial, the latter that is in the sample field is thorougly examined under the light of iconographic analysis. The results of the analysis and the praxis show that myths seem to exist in modern-day mass mediums. The myths in the advertising sector that are used to attract attention and to awaken the feelings of the consumer have symbolic narrative structures, which gives way that they're very likely to be used in the advertising.

Advertising Ethics in the Social Media Age

Advertising ethics covers a wide range of issues, from the advertising of alcohol to misleading price claims. Advertising ethics research has traditionally concentrated on the influence of advertising on consumers or the society in general. New media tend to give rise to new ethical situations. This chapter aims to examine the issue of advertising ethics in the social media and offer suggestions for resolving some of the ethical concerns raised by social media advertising.

The Role of Social Media in International Advertising

This chapter introduces the role of social media in international advertising, thus explaining the concept of social media; the overview of international advertising; the relationship between social media and international advertising; the significance of network capability describing the concept of network capability, the application of network capability, and the emerging research trends in network capability; the significance of image transferability describing the concept of image transferability, the application of image transferability, and the emerging research trends in image transferability; and the significance of personal extensibility describing the concept of personal extensibility, the application of personal extensibility, and the emerging research trends in personal extensibility. Social media has the opportunity to capitalize on network capability to bring people together, image transferability which enables marketers to build the brand with larger audiences than ever before, and personal extensibility which allows interactions and relationships in international advertising.

The Strategic Planning Process of Social Media Advertising in the Context of Integrated Marketing Communication

With the rising number of Internet users and social media platforms, advertising found new source for flourishing. However, social media advertising contains different characteristics compared with conventional or mass media advertising. Social media advertising can provide peer-to-peer communication (instead of one-way communication as in mass media advertising). In the definition of advertising, we see that it is required to pay something for taking place in mass media, but in social media advertising, commonly there is no need for payment, if the right social networks are chosen. This chapter aims to evaluate the process of advertising planning in social media in the context of integrated marketing communication. This chapter contains detailed steps of advertising planning process in social media and comparison between planning process of mass media advertising.