Does Facebook allowing white-nationalist content mean it's endorsing it as an editorial decision?
If any other publication published content that endorses white nationalism, they'd be shunned by the advertising world. Can't imagine Proctor & Gamble or Chevrolet as willing to place their ads next to white-nationalist content in Facebook.
Like, I might if the ad is relevant to the piece of content in question. For example if I am watching construction/woodworking/industrial videos on youtube I won't be surprised if I see ads relating to tools, but thats about it.
I'm not gonna go ahead and buy this tool specifically because the ad is on a video I enjoyed, or associate another company with evil just because it's on a bad video.
Another guess would be it's simply the subconcious thing of seeing an ad to something potentially bad?
I doubt it, but it's complicated. Advertisers think that people do. People know that advertisers think that they do, so they use that to their advantage. If they disagree with something, they know there's nothing they can do... but... they can feign outrage ("I'm boycotting Crest toothpaste because they support X") and since advertisers think they're being genuine, they act. Thus, even though they know the advertisement has nothing to do with the social networking user they dislike, they can have action taken against the person they don't like.
No advertiser is bold enough to say "I think you're lying," and thus, the problem persists. Advertisers get to be the ad-hoc censors of the platforms they advertise on.
I'd guess people would buy more stuff in general if for example TV ads were all aired in the middle of upbeat shows.
Yes. This is how branding works. It's why companies pay for a famous celebrity to represent their brand, instead of a random person, because you associate a higher quality with a famous celebrity.
The major brands have very specific rules on what their ads can appear next to.. they actually write down things like "our ad can't appear next to blood/violence" etc..
Doesn't matter if it's user-generated or not. As long as that image exists next to the brand, the brand is fucked. I mean, what would you think of Chanel if they ever placed their beautiful ad next to a picture of a dead body?
I don't think people are buying because of perceived quality. They buy because celebrities are trend setters. A celebrity using something makes it a kind of status symbol.
But the question remains, does an ad being shown next to something objectionable transfer some of that negative sentiment to the brand? Even when people know the placement is algorithmic/automatic? I don't think speculation will answer this question.
> does an ad being shown next to something objectionable transfer some of that negative sentiment to the brand?
Yes, it does because the negative sentiment will be added to the possible results returned by "System 1"[1][2] thinking that tends to be very fast at approximate searches of long term memory and applying energy saving simplifications/heuristics. System 1 strongly favors fast lookup times over accuracy; this is very useful when you need to decide quickly if that thing you just saw around the corner was a bear or just a strangely shaped shrubbery. Wasting a bit of energy running away from shrubbery is a better survival strategy than waiting for an accurate analysis from System 2 while the bear eats you.
The question isn't if the brand will be negatively affected - it will. What we don't know is how this is the size of the effect, which probably varies wildly due to many different factors.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...
This isn't an open source field with a handy guide. This is a 'knowledge through experience' field. You learn from those people, not through academic research or Google search.
In fact, a good advertiser can instantly find holes in published research based on the many variables that a paper doesn't take into account, but an advertiser is already familiar with. "Brand value correlates with celebrity status... but inversely with the celebrity nationality.. with a correlation with the accent.. but also with season of the year.. except when using this font... and based on president's party" etc.. All these variables may have a nonlinear relationship.
To get a good introduction to what you're dealing with, just watch "Mad Men".
This isn't new a new field of research. This is literally and exactly how branding works.
If you feel a century of advertising science is unproven, feel free to show your own research that goes against the experiences of millions of people in the field.
Someone's random article from a non-ranked journal, but looks like it's got some decent reference papers http://www.jimsjournal.org/13%20Yi%20Ching%20Tsai.pdf
A google search provides very little studies that address endorser on perceived quality of the product. The couple I found provided mixed results, with questionable applicability to western audiences (E.g. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2814907).
Those who are asserting that its obviously true that endorser influences perceived quality apparently do not have the literature behind them.
Do you have something to back that up? Curious if this is true, or just your perception.
Consider the possibility that all basketball shoes are substantially identical, and that Nike is paying LeBron $1B simply to differentiate theirs.
In my opinion it should go back to the old days of chronological content from only the entities I've decided to listen to. (I.E. followed/friends/subscribed.) That way, if the WN want to push their mess, they can, and I'll never be exposed to it because I'm not at all interested in following someone who would ever share that.
If I'm researching a topic about them, then I can search using a standard searching algorithm, and find the relevant content.
Maybe a naive point of view in today's age, but that's what I think is simplest. It also just happens to be how it used to be.