Postman (1993) writes that the computer “has not yet come close to the printing press in its power to generate radical and substantive social, political, and religious thought” (116). This is undoubtedly true; but, putting aside the fact that we have had computers for barely fifty years and the printing press for over five hundred, this is not the kind of work that most would expect from a computer. Postman was concerned with the impact of technology on culture, but an equally interesting question is the effect of computer and network technologies on commerce. As a calculating machine, the computer is ideally suited to managing transactions, modeling financial systems, maintaining accounts, and moving assets around in the abstract; it is not so good at producing original thought.
One area that combines culture and commerce is marketing and advertising. Development of computer technology, and particularly the Internet, has resulted in profound changes in the field of advertising. One could ask, however, if it has been for the better – if it has made advertising more effective. Postman (1993) claims that “everyone uses or is used by computers, and for purposes that seem to know no bounds” (108) and that there exists an “assumption that whatever a computer can do, it should do” (110). The following will address some of the changes the Internet has affected on advertising and consider whether this is something it “should” be doing.
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What has made the Internet fundamentally different as a medium for advertising, compared to print, television, and radio, is the level of interactivity and rapid feedback. While traditional media is able to measure audience size and reception to a limited degree – through, for example, Nielsen ratings – advertisers on the web can receive immediate, detailed information about consumer response to specific placements. Old metrics like pageviews/impressions have been found to be limited, but others, such as click-throughs and data on the number of consumers who actually make a purchase based on an ad response, are more promising. This is made possible by the integrated nature of advertising and sales on the web: products and services advertised can be immediately and directly purchased by consumers through online stores. The relationship between these two activities can be closely tracked, thanks to computers and computer networks.
The ability to track online activities extends beyond the anonymous behavior of web browsers. Information collected through the use of cookies, tracking software, and third-party information sellers allows advertisers to build individual consumer profiles of unprecedented detail. The ability to know where a person is from, what their interests are, and what their typical online behavior is, gives advertisers the knowledge to deliver targeted ads to consumers with great specificity. There are, of course, privacy concerns related to the collection of personal information on the web; nonetheless, the majority of web users are relatively unconcerned, other than the security of financial transactions and personal communications. While some advertisers argue that people are happy to give up personal information in order to receive more personalized ads, recent studies have challenged that claim (Purcell, Brenner, and Rainie).
Postman (1993) warns that the use of information technologies can be “diversionary and dangerous when applied indiscriminately to human affairs” (119). He believes that these technologies are capable of transporting and processing vast quantities of information, but worries that this information is often of little value. Websites and advertisers are building enormous collections of user data, but the ability to actually turn these into sales has been elusive. Intrusive, interactive banner ads were all the rage until someone began to actually measure their effectiveness and found that hardly anyone was clicking on them. Recent studies have found that 75% of online advertising campaigns can be considered failures (“75% of Advertising Campaigns,” 2012) and despite the growth and hype of video ads – like those now found on YouTube – television still accounts for as much as 99% of video consumption (Stelter).
Television was responsible for creating a host of household brand names, but it would be a challenge to name a single recognizable brand developed through online advertising (excluding brands that are native to the Internet, like Google and Yahoo!). While advertising is responsible for much of the web as we know it and has been enormously profitable for online ad sellers like Google and Facebook, it has not as clearly successful for advertisers themselves. This does raise Postman’s implied question of whether the Internet “should” be a medium for advertising.
Postman’s “Technopoly” is a society in which technology is deified and reigns over every aspect of citizen’s lives. Given his criticism of television and television advertising (Postman 1985), one would think that the failure of advertising on the web would indicate that perhaps this is a place where people can escape some of the pervasive influence of media. Undoubtedly, Postman would be concerned with the deluge of information coming from the web and other Internet services, but he missed many of the ways its interactivity has opened channels for more political and social engagement, and for dissent. While some would sympathize with his yearning for old, stable values in the face of “information overload,” others have claimed that his work “belongs to the dismal genre of modern flat-earthen who are resurrecting the age-old complaint that science and technology have robbed ‘us’ of the old certainties” (Weir 216).
Segal (1993) argues that one of the major failings in Postman’s Technopoly is the “absence of a perspective on technology’s past” (1696). It could also be argued that he failed to adequately predict the future, at least when it comes to computers and information technology. The Internet has democratized information in ways similar to the printing press and has also been resistant to control, one form of which would be advertising and branding from deep-pocketed corporations.
- 75% of advertising campaigns fail. (2012, June 18). PRWEB. Retrieved from http://www.prweb.com/releases/online-advertisers/failed-campaigns/prweb9593340.htm
- Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: Penguin Books.
- Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Knopf.
- Purcell, K., Brenner, J., & Rainie, L. (2012, March 9). Targeted advertising: 59% of internet users have noticed it, but most don’t like it. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012/Main-findings/Targeted-advertising.aspx
- Segal, H. P. (1993). [Review of the books Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology and Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits]. The Journal of American History, 79(4), 1695-1697.
- Stelter, B. (2009, March 26). 8 hours a day spent on screens, study finds. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/media/27adco.html
- Weir, S. (1992). Apocalypse, wow [Review of the book Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology]. The Nation, 255(6), 216-217.
