Page 170 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Marketing communications and media 149

Media and advertising integration and disaggregation
The characteristic relationship of media and advertising in mid twentieth century
media was integration with separation. Advertising was integrated in the sense
that it was physically combined with the media product. In newspapers and
magazines, adverts appeared alongside editorial; in linear television, spot (or
block) advertising appeared in designated breaks within or between programmes.
While advertisers controlled their commercial communications, media firms
controlled the packaging and distribution of the ad-carrying media. Media and
advertising were kept separate on the whole. There have always been opportunities
and pressures to integrate but the principles of separation were generally upheld
by journalists, and by creative professionals in television, supported by managers,
underpinned by self-regulatory codes of conduct in both media and advertising
and subject to stronger statutory regulation in some sectors, such as European
broadcasting.
Media and advertising integration is by no means a new phenomenon and has
a long history across all media forms. Yet, arguably the most profound change in
the twenty-first century is that the commercial digital environment has brought
increased pressures from marketers, met with increased accommodation by
media (McChesney 2013: 155). The emergent forms are integration without separation,
but this coexists with trends towards disaggregation of media and advertising.
While these trends are in some senses diametrically opposed, they both reflect a
new shift towards marketer power in an era of increased competition for and
dependence on advertising finance. One of the most documented forms of
media–advertiser integration is product placement and brand integration (Hardy
2010a; Murdock 1992a). Product placement in audiovisual media has a long
history but has increased significantly across North America, China and Western
European systems after liberalisation, with media and marketing integration
extending through computer games (advergames) and social media.
Like integration, disaggregation of media and advertising takes various forms
with different consequences. The most challenging feature is that advertising is
much less dependent on media vehicles; advertisers can buy access to selected
audiences without the need for publishers. Media content still matters, since it
attracts consumers that advertisers seek to reach. However, marketers have much
greater opportunity to reach consumers without subsidising or accommodating
media content providers. The intermediary role of media, creating an audience
to sell to advertisers, is being undermined, in part because the production and
distribution of physical goods are expensive ways to reach audiences, and in part
because of the advantages of new ways to reach target consumers for data
gathering, data management and precision targeting. Content is becoming less
important than the person being tracked. Adverts can be linked to search and
users’ activity online so that advertising follows people’s profiles rather than
being bundled with media content. The affordances of digital communications
are driving marketers to demand that they pay only the actual costs of delivering