ETHICAL & SOCIAL DISCUSSION
“If I were an average user, I probably wouldn’t want [pop-ups] either.” says the Chief operating officer of SpecificMedia, an online advertising firm that runs two networks of pop-under ads. (Cassavoy Liane)
The fact that these words belong to one of those people who earns their living on producing what they themselves find annoying is a stark proof that the ethics of this pop-up business is questionable.
In this section, I would like to show the viewer that pop-up advertising raises ethical questions at many fronts in varying intensities. The problems ranges from the more conventional ones that can be found in advertising in general such as deceptive advertising or the advertising of harmful products to more deeper and special ones such as intrusive nature of these ads, the fact that they pop up and impose themselves onto the consumers. I will then peek into a deeper layer of ethical unease, which is formed by the new business practices enabled by the new technologies.
To see where the ethical problems arise, let’s begin by asking the question why these pop-ups are annoying. We should at this point be conscious that there will be a variety of answers, most of which are related to different types of ethical concerns. The same chief operating officer I have quoted above answers this question as, “There are too many on the Web- way too many,” and he adds, “When we first started, it was supposed to be one user per day." However, given the anarchic nature of the Internet, especially Internet advertising who is there to put a barrier to entry. The uncontrollable nature of Internet proves its character in this matter, too.
At this point, the question of ethicasy is still not answered. Instead a new question arises. If there had been actually one pop-up per user per day, would it still be ethical? The fact that something is tolerable, does it make it ethical? Although not easily answered, these questions are important in terms of getting to, what I would call the core of the issue.
Let’s look at this question of tolerability with some examples from the history of Internet advertising. As mentioned in the Background section, before the rise of the pop-up advertising banner ads were very popular for internet businesses. With the development of the pop-up advertising the banner ads are no longer claimed to be as intrusive. The customers are so overwhelmed with the pop-up ads that they seem to be rather complacent with the stationary banner ads, even if they are covering the whole top part of their browser windows. This in turn indicates the disempowerment of the customer even dragged into emotional breakdowns at times. It is easy to find such examples. One user reacts to the ad that automatically playing audio says, "If anything can be worse than pop-ups, this is it. I hate this ad. Hate hate hate" (Nielsen, Jakob). The customers' reaction threshold can not keep up with the speed of development in Internet marketing schemes. This observations lie at the core for understanding the transformation of relationship between businesses and individual customers and applicability of ethics to such an ever changing relation.
Leane Cassavoy from PC World writes an article Bye bye pop-ups. Hello?, in which she discusses that with the spread of pop-up blockers, the internet ad firms have already come up with new forms of internet advertising enriched with rich media that streams audio and video of scroll text and images across the screen. This we have defined as floating ad in the Background section. This does seem to support the above statement that one form of internet advertising is replaced by another before the society pulls itself together to give a unified reaction has truth in it. It certainly does. However, the question remains for how long the Internet can continue to manipulate masses and play with the power balance between the customer and the businesses. This question has its own perks inside as well. Are we to blame the technology, the people using it or those who are incapable of regulating it? Is it even justifiable to point at exactly one party to carry the ethical and social responsibility?
Online ad maker Unicast asserts that with the rich media ads they are downloaded to a temporary file and play only in between web pages, which make them look like TV ads. Does the fact that the ads are more similar to what we have a similar example from the past make them less intrusive. Whether it justifies or lessons their intrusive nature remains as a question. (Cassavoy, Leane)
As you would observe the questions are endless, but they are still necessary to be asked. By questioning we can hope to deduce the patterns in which pop-up advertising and in general Internet advertising impose themselves onto the customer and give the customer and business a chance to smoothen at least those things which are ethically most questionable and bothersome.
Immediate Problems: Deceptive advertising and Marketing of harmful products
Let’s ask the question, what is so annoying with pop-ups to hear an answer this time from a consumer. Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox on The Most Hated Advertising Techniques provide invaluable information on what is it that drives the consumers most crazy. A user, who entered a feedback comment on a major website says, “You people should be ashamed of yourself! I did not ask to have 3 pop ups come across my screen when I visit you. I do not visit singles sites, and I don’t want to add 4 inches to my penis. As a matter of fact, I do not use any of the services that pop up on my screen. I think it is disgusting that you money hungry bastards have infringed on my computer for your own selfish gain. From this moment on, I am boycotting you, and I am advising EVERYONE I know to do the same thing. Down with you and your pop-up ads.” This comment is incredibly rich in showing different types of ethical questions that pop-up ads raise.
First, the comment above tells us that the product does not relate to the customer, in other words it can be classified as a non-beneficial product. This is a type of ethical question often faced in other sorts of advertising as well, which is a reason why advertising can be hated by many people. Daniel E. Palmer in his essay, Pop-ups, Cookies and Spams: Towards a deeper Analysis of the Ethical Significance of Internet Marketing Practices supports this view that marketing of harmful and non-beneficial products is one of the two things that have been at the center of ethical discussions in the history. Therefore, I would also like to move onto focus on what is there that is new pertaining to pop-up advertising in order to identify what new mechanisms needs to be developed to address the current ethical problem which obviously the past forms of actions does not seem to get hold of Internet advertising.
A deeper questioning of the situation reveals the second aspect of pop-up advertising: deception and traps. As mentioned in the same article, it is later found out that the site that the consumer was revolting against had not created these pop-ups. Rather the ads were generated by the spyware the consumer had somehow installed. Therefore the second dimension of the problem is the deceptive advertising mechanism behind the pop-up realm. One of the traps consumers might fall into while dealing with pop-ups as well as some other activities is the fact that certain pop-ups retrieves your information without your consent upon your click and acts as spyware from that moment on.
There is no question at this point that the use of private information without the user’s prior consent is illegal. The fact that it is illegal automatically at this point justifies that it is unethical as well and there is action taken against this part. As it is also discussed more in length in the Legal Discussion section the U.S House of Representitives passes the anti-spyware bill. However, the internet users are dispersed all over the world and the fact that there are no actions taken against these situations in other countries does not justify these actions as ethical. On the contrary, it tells more about the urge to hasten the policy activities regarding Internet.
Deception, of course does not only occur when the consumer is under attack of the spyware. A quick look at the numerous types of pop-ups gives an idea of the various ways the consumers are tricked. PC Today uses a user-friendly terminology for different types of what we might call pop-ups. Pop-up is the ad that appears in a window on top of the current browser window. Pop-under appears under your browser. Pop-ups appearing without a click, without extra user action, they call surprise pop-ups. There are also those which appear as a pop-up inside a fake window-which PC Today calls it fake pop-up. The diagrams below represent only a minority of the tricks being used.
|
All in all, this type of deception is clearly unethical. These tricks go beyond the usual tactics of advertising such as showing the good parts of the product and exaggerating the usefulness of the product. The problem at this point does not lie with what's up with the product but how the businesses try everything to make the consumer click inside the pop-up window. Some introduce false buttons with polite languages like No, Thank you. Whether you thank or not having clicked inside the pop-up is what counts for them and your action does not close the window, instead it might take you to unwanted pages. This is clearly a sign that the customer can not define the access terms, rather the advertiser determines what you do out of our consent or consciousness.
The Larger Picture: Intrusive nature of pop-ups, disempowerment of the customer, reallocation of financial and non-financial costs onto the customer.
A closer psychological analysis of the comment reveals us that what it is that makes the pop-up so disgusting to the customer is not the mere existence of an ad about increasing the size of one’s penis, but the fact that this ad is imposed on this particular person uninvited and unexpectedly in the form of a pop-up ad. At this point the nature of the pop up ads proves to be very intrusive and couples up with the effect of advertising of non-beneficial products. The consumer feels the need to fight, to boycott. The word choices shows that the consumer feels threatened and urged to react and put up a fight against something that they encounter on the screen of their computer for mere seconds. In the ages of Internet the things drive you most crazy can be small ad of 4 cm2, which appears on your screen for few seconds which overlooks the conscious decision making capacity of the customer and challenges the conventional definition of what you might call personal privacy. CEO of Sun Microsystems, Scott Mc Nealy, seems to have right in saying, "There is no more privacy. Get over it!" (National Conference on State Legislations)
This observation brings us back to what Daniel Palmer in his essay argues that the issue demands a deeper ethical analysis than that is done for other types of advertising. Palmer makes a parallel between spam and pop-ups. Palmer says:
“If the problem with spam advertising was merely that the information it contained was deceptive or that the products and services advertised non-beneficial, then the outcry over spam would hardly be as widespread as it for the simple reason that most of us pay very little attention to what is contained in spam advertisements anyway… Likewise if the use of pop-ups and cookies in marketing… pose a particular problem, it must be one that moves us beyond questions of product. Our inquiry needs as such to change to reflect the nature of the practices involved in e-commerce themselves.”
Conclusion:
Therefore, I come to the conclusion that what is especially new with the pop-up advertising is the fact that the customers are disempowered in relationship to the internet advertising companies and how some of these companies operate. The internet advertising companies let alone bearing any cost, continue to add to their revenues even with the unintentional or the innocent deceived clicking of the Internet users. Both the financial and the non-financial cost of these advertisements are reallocated to the customers (Palmer, Daniel). Beyond the layers of ethical uneasiness due to intrusive nature of pop-up ads lays the new business practices whose ethical foundation should be questioned. The deeper ethical unease is therefore stemming from the new and uncontrolled ways which Internet enables businesses to interact with customers. The terms of access are no longer determined by the customers, which in turn threatens the privacy and the autonomy of the individual Internet user.
In the LEGAL discussion Section, we offer the history of legal actions taken related to Internet advertising and possible suggestions for third party actions.
In the GUIDANCE Section, we offer suggestions for possible actions and policies individuals and businesses can adopt.