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.