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Organizations | Magazines | Agencies | Product Ads | Events and Chat areas

As advertising has become more pervasive and consumers more discriminating, ad practitioners have searched for ways to weave their work more seamlessly into the social and cultural fabric. Products now blend as props or even characters in TV shows and movies. In addition, almost every consumer product now has its own site on the World Wide Web, displaying advertising on computers around the globe. With today's video technology and computer graphics, producers can even generate an advertising image on a wall or flat surface when in reality no image exists.

As individuals and as a society we have developed an uneasy relationship with advertising. Favorite ads and commercial jingles remain part of our cultural world for a lifetime. But we detest irritating and repetitive commercials using the remote control to mute the offenders on television. We realize that without ads many mass media would need to reinvent themselves. And this includes the Web. Despite what some would call unlimited access, the access is for a price. Self-promotion fills the Web, with everyone (and anyone) selling a product, a service, an idea or an image. With the information that can be collected about users of the Web, the advertisements that appear on your personal computer as you browse the Web, may indeed be there just for you.

At the same time, we remain critical of what advertising has come to represent: the overemphasis on commercial acquisitions and cultural images, and the disparity between those who can afford new products and those who cannot.


Organizations

There are a number of representative agencies for advertising and marketing. Those listed below are just a few of the many available. As with many Web sites, these are both informational and self-promotional.

Magazines

There are several magazines that are important to the advertising and marketing industry. Besides articles and the newest strategies, they offer the latest information on a range of information from production costs to recent costs for ad time and space, technology updates and so forth.

Agencies

Many ad agencies have Web sites, and there are unique aspects to some of them. For example, the layout is often unique with an emphasis on graphics and attractive layout. Although self-promotional, some offer a good deal of information regarding product testing, marketing research, ad campaign information and so on; some even get into legal and ethical issues.

Product Ads

There are so many products with Web sites that it would be impossible to list even a portion of them here, so we've picked a representation of some of the variety that exists in product advertising. Be sure to click through on a few banner ads while you're at another site, many times they don't just lead you to the product site, but to an interactive game about the product. When you do a search on a search engine, notice if a banner ad appears that seems directly related to your search. If so, it is a result of the newest trend in Web advertising--"owning" a key search word.

  • US Robotics

  • JCrew

  • Coca Cola

  • The Alden Group

  • AT&T

  • ModeMedia

  • WalMart

Events and Chat areas

Several browsers and on-line services offer special events or opportunities to enter into a "live" conversation with a CEO or ad executive. Most services and browsers also offer bulletin boards where you can post comments or pose questions on a specific topic or in this case a product or commercial, and chat areas where you can enter into live conversations with other people from around the world in a discussion of advertising news, questions about the industry, or perhaps a specific commercial or ad campaign. Some of these include:

  • Online Services: America Online, Compuserve, Prodigy, and the Microsoft Network often offer entertainers and newsmakers for an evening of live discussion with others who might share your concerns or are interested in the effects of advertising or in the creation of commercials or ad campaigns.

  • Browsers and search engines: Netscape, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and other browsers or search engines often deal with issues related to the world of advertising and marketing:

  • CNN Chat

  • MSNBC Chat

  • Ultimate TV

  • There are two excellent Web resources for locating newsgroups and mailing lists. But don't forget your netiquette if you decide to join in!

    • DejaNews is a search engine for newsgroups. As with a Web search engine, entering keywords will return links to newsgroup articles that contain your keyword.
    • Liszt, the mailing list directory, is a guide to a wide variety of mailing lists (complete with instructions on how to join them).
Try it out!

Since this list is nowhere near exhaustive, do some searching and create your own bookmarks of sites including:

  • Advertising agencies, both traditional media and new media

  • Specific products

  • Interest Groups (anyone in the advertising or marketing industry)

  • Regional new media associations (like New York New Media Association)

  • Other related sites (marketing resources, research, reference materials etc.)

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