Final Paper

(Final Project) Prevalence of Sexually Oriented Advertising on Popular Web Sites.

How prevalent are sexually oriented ads on the internet’s mainstream sites? What are some of the features common to mainstream SOA?

Previous Study:

The previous study from Artemio Ramirez Jr. (“Sexually Oriented Appeals on the Internet,” 2006, SEX in Consumer Culture) showed several mainstream websites categorized by the type of information offered, from Sports to Entertainment to News. Results showed that all three categories of websites contained some sort of sexually oriented advertising within. News sites contained the smallest amount of SOA, while entertainment and sports sites varied greatly in size but were generally more saturated with SOA.

The second set of results showed that among the sexually oriented ads on these sites nearly all of them highlighted physical features and nearly a quarter of all ads featured movement, context, proxemics, and combinations of the three.

These conclusions lead the researchers to agree that sex does sell on the internet.

Relevant literature:

Relevant studies by previous researchers Kaye & Medoff (2001) on browsing behavior contributed to Ramirez’s study above. Lambiase (2003, pg 257) also contributed with theories about the evolvement of SOA on the internet. She explained that sophisticated technology is using demographics and other information gathered through browsing habits to adjust ads to the consumer.

Corpus and Method:

My corpus examines six mainstream web sites from three major categories. News sites (CNN.com, Foxnews.com), sports sites (ESPN.com, CBSsports.com) and entertainment sites (Eonline.com, MTV.com). First the web sites homepages were scanned for advertisements including banners, pop ups and scrolling texts. Each ad was classified as to whether or not it contained sexually oriented advertising. The ads that did contain SOA were then coded based on their attributes, such as movement, context, and the prevalence of sexualized physical features. Each was then broken down in to a percentage. In order to ensure that my own browsing habits would not interfere, three different computers were used in the Willis Library, one for each site. All three websites were accessed on the same day (Wednesday November 7, 2007) within the course of one hour. I tried to stay away from links with pictures that may have been promoting a television show being shown on a partner of some of the websites (E! and ESPN in particular).

Findings:

Surprisingly, the news websites contained the larger amount of advertisements including sexually oriented attributes. The proportion of ads that did actually contain SOA were, however, relatively close across the board. ESPN.com ended up with 1out of 3 ads containing SOA for a percentage of .33, while CBSsports.com had 1 out of 6 for a .167. All of the SOA on these two sites could be coded as having highlighted physical features and movement. CNN.com contained 2 SOA’s out of 10 ads for a .2 and FoxNews.com had 2 SOA’s as well out of 13 ads for a final percentage of .154. Both of these websites contained print ads for singles that could only be coded as contextual. The entertainment sites such as MTV.com had 1 SOA out of 3 ads for a .33 and Eonline.com was 2 for 7 with a .286. Both of these websites feature SOA with highlighted physical features, movement and context.

Many of the advertisements on “E!’s” website in particular for their own television shows were highly sexualized, such as shows like The Girl Next Door which features three playboy bunnies as main characters.

Conclusion:

My findings in this experiment did not necessarily fit the findings of the previous research. I did not stumble on to sexually oriented advertising as often as was suggested by the original study. Some websites did have sexualized images but they were not necessarily paid advertisements, which was what I was interested in. A larger sample of web sites within these three categories may be necessary to come up with more refined percentages in the future. Another study may be the amount of non-paid advertising on websites advertising for another form of media owned by the same company. Nearly all of the sexually oriented advertising that I came across featured women in some way. Only one appealed to women, a print ad about meeting single men on FoxNews.com.

References:

CBSsports.com

CNN.com

Eonline.com

ESPN.com

FoxNews.com

MTV.com

Ramirez, Artemio Jr. “Sexually Oriented Appeals on the Internet” 2006, SEX in Consumer Culture.

Reichert, Tom and Lambiase, Jacqueline. SEX in Consumer Culture. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, publisher. 2006.

Great Taste! LESS FILLING!

Hot girls and beer...in today's day and age those two things just seem to go together. Although, for most of the people in this country one rarely occurs as a result of the other.
In landslide fashion, beer ads and sex wound up together, forever. Whether it was the Swedish bikini teams and Old Milwaukee or the "Great Taste. Less Filling." girls and Miller Lite...sex just sells.
Its unfortunate that this is the best way to sell beer and alcohol. Maybe one day it will all be read about in history books. Kids of the future will see the erosion of the Great American Society through the eyes of drunken men; angry because their beers were not delivered by the Coors Light twins.
Let's face it. We're a society that enjoys a little sex every now and then. Even the less than average American is intelligent enough to understand that this does not happen to many of us when we kick back with the brew...
The problem with sex and beer advertising? Apparently the better looking she is, the better her beer tastes.

Disabilities in the media.

More people in today's day and age are being portrayed with disabilities in television and news media. With the runaway success of the show Family Guy over the past 7 or 8 years, one character in particular, Joe Swanson, really catches my attention.
If you don't know already, or don't watch the show, Joe is a hot shot police officer in the town the show takes place in who supposedly had an accident on the job that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He is confined to a wheel chair from the very first episode.
If you're looking for classy humor in a show, Family Guy is not for you, as sometimes Joe's disability is made fun of, however Joe never seems to mind too much. Joe never misses a beat with his buddies because of his disability, whether its being wheel-barrowed around with skates on his hands at the roller rink or being strung like a marionette for a dance number, it may look degrading, but Joe is always having fun.
And let's not forget Joe is still a cop. He prides himself on never loosing a "perp." In several episodes his police siren pops out of his wheel chair and he wheels down the bad guys, showing great agility and upper arm strength.
While this doesn't necessarily provide inspiration to thousands of disabled people in this country, it does provide an outlet for people to laugh without feeling like they should be condemned for it. In the long run it may create a more comfortable environment for people with and without physical disability to not only talk about it but to be unashamed about having one themselves. I realize that a great many people in this world with a physical "disability" do not consider themselves disabled at all, and feel no shame for their misfortunes. Joe is pop culture's shining example of this type of person. Joe is paralyzed and doesn't let it slow him down in the slightest, all the while keeping an open mind to a few tasteless jokes. People can learn a lesson from Family Guy about "tolerance." There are appropriate ways to portray and even laugh about a disability in this world. We've all got to find something to laugh about, including ourselves once in a while.