Friday, August 31, 2012

Digital Media Convergence: The Metamorphosis of Advertising and the Utilization of New Media

Source:http://excapite.wordpress.com/
Technology has seen some exponential changes over the last decade, so much that the way we view it has changed too. Not only are we now using it differently, in a sense, it is using us! Media convergence has changed the way we as consumers absorb advertisements through revolutionary new methods which are focused on interaction (Jenkins, 2006). With advertising, instead of traditional methods being used, such as television and newspapers as a medium, digital media convergence brings new life to these dated methods in order to appeal to a rapidly changing society.

Source:Cartoonnetwork.com.au
Traditional media was very much uni-directional in its interaction. Producers would have the resources, technical skills and authority from which they could produce content for their audiences. Consumers would use their radio, television set or newspaper to receive information as well as being exposed to advertising content. It was very much a case of “passive media spectatorship” (Jenkins, 2006), with consumer being very limited in their interaction with content. However, with the rise of digital media convergence, people now have the ability to interact with the content that is relevant to their interests. Online advertising has spawned in order to keep up with consumer being more involved on the internet than ever before. The internet is now an integral part of our life, as it is now relevant to almost everything that we do, whether that is communicating with others, researching topics, finding locations or even entertaining ourselves. Companies have had to adapt to this change in order to get consumers to interact with advertisements that represent their products (Dwyer, 2010).
As with traditional media, producers of advertisements would target their prime audiences by advertising in places that would allow for audiences to access these adverts as easily as possible. For example, advertisements that had children as their key audience would advertise during the time that children’s entertainment would be playing on television. However, as the internet has become a much more involved with people in society, producers have seamlessly integrated into the platform and have utilised it very well in order to suit their needs (Sheehan and Morrison). Cartoon Network, a popular channel that caters for children’s entertainment has a place for advertisements on each of its web pages, allowing companies who create content relevant to children to spread awareness of their product. 
Likewise, social networking sites have also sold space on their pages allowing companies to buy place to advertise their products. Facebook, MySpace and Bebo all have places on their web pages from which advertisers may post their products. Facebook in particular has a very effective method that caters to the users tastes. For someone who is a male and in his early adult years, the advertisements shown are ones that are most likely to appeal to him. Those shown in the image were taken from the account of an eighteen year old male. Facebook uses the “like” system in order for people to raise awareness of the products they enjoy. This allows users to create discussion on these products and communicate with advertisers in relation to the product (Sheehan and Morrison). As traditional media had very clearly distinguished between the producer and consumer in the past, digital media convergence has allowed the two to become one in the same, hence the term, “prosumer” (Walter, 2009).
 
Source: Minecraft.net
The mainstream gaming industry has, as of late, become slightly misguided in its aims. Many games developed by larger companies such as EA Games and Activision, seem more focused on profits more than anything else, with games catering to a far more casual audience. While they are making their games more accessible to a wider audience, they have also sacrificed what make gaming entertaining, which is originality. Today, many titles are infected with cover-based tactics, hand-holding game play and poor-writing, which has sparked a rise of the independent game developer. Markus ‘Notch’ Perrson developed the game ‘Minecraft’, a game in which the player is placed on a landscape and must survive by building tools and structures with the resources he finds. “There are no instructions, no levels, no mission structure, no story, no lives, no points, no clear goal”, says Tom Cheshire from the UK Wired Website. While Notch’s resources were fairly minimal, he was able to gain awareness of his game in the early days of its development by advertising it on social websites. 4Chan’s videogame board and Reddit were some of the internet communities which Notch had exposed to Minecraft and popularity of this product had spread to vast amounts. More recognisable websites such as Facebook also advertised the game via the “like” function, while Youtube showed audiences exactly how unique the game was. Notch had estimated that Minecraft had made $33 million dollar (USD) with 800,000 sales of the alpha game and 1,000,000 of the game in the beta stage of development. This is phenomenal if one considers the fact that this meant the game had not yet even been completed. Even more incredible than this is that the game was not advertised at all at this stage, all of the popularity it had gotten at this point was from word of mouth (Plunkett, 2011).


The tablet is one of the best examples of digital media convergence to date. Namely, the iPad, because of the way it has been advertised. The first iPad commercial, which debut in 2010 presented a device which was essentially a personal computer within the dimensions of a magazine. The iPad was shown to be able to communicate with others, browse the web and social networking sites, watch movies and television and read books and newspapers. With these features in mind, Mark Potts, an independent journalist voices his thoughts during the time leading up to the iPad’s release. He states, “Apple's tablet has the potential to change the way we consume and pay for media—many different types of media—as substantially as the company revolutionized the computing business”. The iPad has lived up to its hype and is just as versatile as mentioned, if not more with annual revisions being churned out. This is mostly due its size to functionality ratio; being able to do so many things a personal computer can do, while at a fraction of the size. The public received this product so well because it caters to all the needs that the digital media revolution has sparked, which is why the tablet is such a useful platform (Koelewijn, 2009). Society today requires the tools the iPad provides in order to be entertained, educated, productive, social and informed. 

Digital media convergence has had an exponential impact on the way companies, and now everyday users, compose content. Changing the platform from analogue devices to digital ones have provided a new place to cultivate with content, that is not restricted by the limits of analogue content production. Convergence of the many different types of media have allowed for new ways of creating and promoting content, one which is much more accustomed to the vast and eventful internet, which has made a grand impact in the lives of modern society. 

Unit Readings:
  • Dwyer, Tim (2010), Media Convergence, Berksire: McGraw Hill, pp.1-23.
  • Jenkins, Henry (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New York University Press, pp. 1-24  
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