Page 171 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

150 Critical investigations in political economy

an advert onto a selected platform (Turow 2011). Consequently the traditional
subsidy supporting the news, information or entertainment surrounding adver-
tisements is set to diminish, with profound consequences for democratic
communication resources, public media and cultural pluralism. At the same time
the costs of managing the data that brings together advertising and consumers
have created new industries and intermediaries. Paying these is one factor in the
reduced income from online advertising for publishers. Publishers receive only
around 20 per cent of the amount spent on advertising on their site with the
remaining 80 per cent going to ad networks and data handlers (Pariser 2011;
McChesney 2013: 156)
Advertising integration and disaggregation trends are obviously contrary ten-
dencies: the embedding of advertising within content, and the disembedding of
advertising from content publishing and packaging online. Yet both tendencies
spring from the same underlying dynamics and reflect responses to increasing
dependence of media on advertising finance. Taking advantage of the competi-
tion among web creators and distributors, ‘media buyers are eroding the power
of web publishers and causing them to play by advertisers’ new rules to survive’
(Turow 2011: 112).
Marketing professionals identify three main kinds of media: paid, earned and
owned. Traditional advertising is ‘paid’, inserting advertisements into media vehicles
or other advertising spaces. Earned media describes public relations activities to
generate editorial coverage. The third area, owned, has been transformed by the
opportunities for marketers to reach consumers directly via the Internet. Owned
media has taken various forms such as contract publishing, that have been aided
by but also pre-date digitalisation. But the commercial expansion of the Internet
has been a game-changer: the increasing accessibility and reach of owned media
increases pressures on media for accommodation in paid and earned media.

Advertising, regulation and democracy

Product placement and invasive advertising have intensified not because of
technological capabilities or market forces alone but because the constraining
force of societal regulation has been relaxed in favour of corporate actors. The
significance of regulation and the struggles between state, market and civil
society actors to shape governance are neglected in some culturalist accounts,
which treat promotional culture as the outcome of cultural and market evolution.
The political economy tradition, by contrast, identifies regulation as a site of
struggle between private and public interests and examines how policies that
favour market actors over citizens’ interests have arisen. No other group in
democratic societies commands the same power as marketers to speak. The critical
tradition explores the relationship between advertising and systems of domination
that restrict capacities for human emancipation and for democratic rule. The
relationship between corporate media and advertising narrows the range of
information, ideas and imagery in media. Advertisers tend to reinforce politically