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In the past few years, users of social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram have experienced a sharp change in the layout and content of their pages. Now, when scrolling down through a person’s News Feed, one will stumble upon numerous advertisements, paid for by companies and placed on your feed because of your previous search or click history. These advertisements have been placed there simply because the tracking algorithm believes that the product or service it is advertising is something you would be interested in. This new way of marketing, dubbed “Social Media Marketing” is changing not only the way businesses communicate with their customers but also their relationship to the customer base. How these companies track consumer behavior and deliver certain advertisements to target customers opens the door to questions of ethics. In this paper, I will explore both sides of social media marketing’s ethical dilemma.
One of the biggest reasons as to why social media marketing should be used is that it makes the whole browsing experience for consumers more personalized. Businesses want to utilize the power of social media to not only maintain the …show more content…
The way that data mining and advertising companies make money through social media marketing is through the sale of information about customers to other companies. In fact, “the profitability of these services depends on users remaining unaware of the extent to which their privacy is (or will be) exploited” (Baskin, 2014, p. 3). Baskin’s point is interesting because, since social media sites come free of charge, and thus decrease marketing costs of companies, other companies must pay for the data collected by these sites, which determines the profitability of the company. So, not only do websites collect data, but they also now sell that data to other companies. How ethical does that
In the past few years, users of social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram have experienced a sharp change in the layout and content of their pages. Now, when scrolling down through a person’s News Feed, one will stumble upon numerous advertisements, paid for by companies and placed on your feed because of your previous search or click history. These advertisements have been placed there simply because the tracking algorithm believes that the product or service it is advertising is something you would be interested in. This new way of marketing, dubbed “Social Media Marketing” is changing not only the way businesses communicate with their customers but also their relationship to the customer base. How these companies track consumer behavior and deliver certain advertisements to target customers opens the door to questions of ethics. In this paper, I will explore both sides of social media marketing’s ethical dilemma.
One of the biggest reasons as to why social media marketing should be used is that it makes the whole browsing experience for consumers more personalized. Businesses want to utilize the power of social media to not only maintain the …show more content…
The way that data mining and advertising companies make money through social media marketing is through the sale of information about customers to other companies. In fact, “the profitability of these services depends on users remaining unaware of the extent to which their privacy is (or will be) exploited” (Baskin, 2014, p. 3). Baskin’s point is interesting because, since social media sites come free of charge, and thus decrease marketing costs of companies, other companies must pay for the data collected by these sites, which determines the profitability of the company. So, not only do websites collect data, but they also now sell that data to other companies. How ethical does that