Advertisers as advocates of censorship

DEFINITION: Business concerns and other bodies that use their financial influence to shape or restrict the editorial or artistic content of the media in which they advertise

SIGNIFICANCE: Advertisers have had considerable influence in censoring the content of the broadcast and print media because of their unwillingness to associate their own names, messages, and images with images, ideas, or persons of which they may disapprove

Advertisers wield considerable power over the content of publications and programs that serve as vehicles for conveying information to the public regarding their own goods and services. In many cases, advertisers provide a significant portion of the revenue for the media in which they advertise. The two basic categories of advertisers are national and local. National advertisers are mostly major corporations that are seeking to inform the public of a particular brand of product or service that they provide. By contrast, local advertisers are generally interested in persuading members of their own communities to purchase products or services from their local businesses. The ability of national advertisers—because of their greater resources—to impose censorship is substantially greater than that of local advertisers.

Targeted Markets

One reason advertisers attempt to influence media content is their desire to convey messages to predesignated markets they do not wish to offend. In amassing information on the make-up, or profile, of their targeted markets, advertisers believe that the content and style of their messages must make an overall favorable appeal, or they will be ineffective. Advertisers further assume that the information in the medium carrying their advertising must be compatible with what they perceive to be the interests and values of their markets. Advertisers, therefore, prefer to use the media whose content and style conform to their own judgments about the interests, values, likes, and dislikes of their predesignated markets.

The media that advertisers select are also aware of the characteristics of their own audiences or readers, as well as the markets their advertisers target. Advertisers consider numerous social, economic, and political factors in designing their advertising and in selecting the media in which to advertise their products and services. These include race, ethnicity, gender, age, social class, occupation, income, education, religion, political affiliations, and regional characteristics.

Mainstream advertisers are generally interested in targeting one or more primary markets for their goods and services. Traditionally, in the United States, members of predesignated markets have been typically young, white, and middle-class people; however, that has changed in the 2000s, as advertisers seek to reach more diverse ethnic and racial audiences. Furthermore, advertisers tend to target urbanites and those with purchasing power. Therefore, advertisers will frequently seek to impose control over the content and style of media that handle their advertising to conform to the interests and lifestyle of a particular market. When conflicts arise regarding the style and content of advertising, as well as in the overall media, advertisers tend to exercise censorship in the interest of accommodating their targeted market.

Censoring Through Imagery

Aside from controlling the content of publications and programs, advertisers also influence images purveyed by the media, which carry their messages. Although information must be geared toward the interests, values, and culture of an advertiser’s targeted market, so must the images that media use to inform the designated market of the advertiser’s product or service. Visual images are an integral part of most advertising campaigns. Even when a nonvisual medium is used, such as radio and podcasts, advertisers present advertising sounds—such as rushing water or high-performance automobile engines—that invoke visual images in the minds of the listening audience.

Traditionally, advertisers used many means to control images used by the broadcast and print media to appeal to young, White, middle-class target markets. These means have included omission of certain kinds of images, use of stereotypes, and the purveying of nonrepresentative images. Despite challenges from marginal groups, particularly African Americans, advertisers have tended to exclude them from mainstream advertisements, though representation has increased.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, both national and local advertisers were unwilling to sponsor or have their advertisements appear in television programs whose casts are predominantly African American. In still other cases, when African American–oriented publications signed major advertisers, the advertisers often refused to modify their advertisements to include African American models. It has not been uncommon to see White models portrayed in African American–oriented publications. Whether advertisers provide a rationale for such policies, such as cost-efficiency or time constraints, such decisions tend to influence the editorial content of publications.

Advertisers also control the visual content of advertisements by using stereotypical imagery. Gross caricatures of African Americans to advertise products such as soap, baking powder, and cooking oil were common during the nineteenth century. Advertisers continued this practice in the twentieth century by using stereotyped African American images on food products such as Aunt Jemima (rebranded the Pearl Milling Company in 2021) pancake mix, whose product logos depicted a stereotypical African American domestic worker. Similarly, Uncle Ben’s Rice (renamed Ben’s Original in 2020) long used pictures of an older African American man. These and other stereotypical images that appear in advertising have been challenged because they suggest that African Americans are best suited for certain occupational roles. There has also been a tendency among advertisers to portray women of all races in stereotypical roles performing domestic tasks and providing support for their husbands and children.

In the digital age, the influence of advertisements extended beyond print and broadcast outlets into platforms like YouTube, which employ advertiser-friendly content guidelines using language like “controversial issues” or “inappropriate language” without concrete definitions. This allows platforms greater discretion in selectively demonetizing content, effectively aligning with advertiser preferences. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a major advertiser coalition that set brand safety standards affecting content monetization, shut down following legal and political scrutiny. The US Federal Trade Commission has investigated major advertising agencies over coordinated ad boycotts, arguing that ‘brand safety’ standards were used to influence which content could be monetized on digital platforms.

Censoring Advertisers

Despite the considerable power that advertisers exercise over the media, they have also been subject to censorship themselves. There have been constant efforts to place bans on advertising by citizen groups, government policymakers, and other businesses. Such efforts have typically tried to restrict the advertising of certain products, notably tobacco products, alcohol, condoms, artificial sweeteners, firearms, and certain films and books. Advertisers have responded to such attacks by maintaining that efforts to ban advertising may lead to a controlled economy, the demise of the First Amendment, and ultimately a dictatorship.

Other Countries

Throughout Europe, greater control has been imposed upon advertisers than in the United States. In Great Britain, for example, radio and television services were originally established as public service systems—in contrast to the commercially oriented broadcasting systems in the United States. Concern over the danger of exploiting the public contributed to greater control over advertisers in Britain and throughout Europe. It is generally held that advertisers have considerably more freedom to advertise in the United States than in Britain. In countries like France and Germany, regulatory bodies monitor content and placement of advertising; advertising aimed at children is tightly controlled, and political or socially sensitive content is subject to public oversight. In the European Union, regulations such as the Digital Services Act have increased transparency requirements and restricted certain targeted advertising practices, leading some platforms to limit political advertising.

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