The Impact of New Media on the Design and Advertisement Industries - Term Paper Example

New media has impacted the advertising industry among other industries positively to a certain degree in that one; it has made maximum impact to the public in brand advertisement through studies that have been carried out on this topic. It is dynamical flexible and in that, enabled the increase in advertisement design and editing in minimum time. It has made advertising cost effective unlike the print media where costs of paper and other printing materials are done away with. New media has led to an instant turn around in advertisement industry because of the simplicity in implementation and its wide networking character. It is adaptable with the new computer programmes thus making work flow without impediments. Its availability in video has enabled it to capture attention of the public more easily, with its main disadvantage being that its spending has not been well articulated all over the world despite its significant use in this era. In terms of the design industry, the video game industry has seen it be able to produce 3D animation games that have a high virtual representative ness of the real world. The music industry has benefited in terms of synthetic sound production while put to a demerit at the same time from increased piracy from new media. The transport industry has modified its vehicles to be safety oriented while the web design industry has expanded social relations beyond boarders but discredited due to pornographic sites that erode morals of minors and the society in general. Introduction New media is a recent term that has come to be used in reference to the digital world more so with reference to computers in information and communication technology. It is a product of the twentieth centaury that saw its evolutionary roots from analogue technology. It has characterized relations of this era by making globalization a popular topic. Trade between people and organizations in far geographical locations now takes place by just a touch of a button behind the comfort of ones personal computer via the internet. The incorporation of new media in to the society inform of a globalized world tends to bring in threats into the moral social set up as indiscriminate receivership of information in the internet becomes difficult to control exposing people to different unethical practises. Advertisement industry A research done by Millward Brown agency in the UK relayed information to prove that new media can give maximum impact to observers of its advertisements. Millward is a mobile phone marketing organization that under took the first study to ascertain the significance of mobile phones in advertisement. Advertisements were sent to mobile phone users in the UK and measure the impacts it had on the people who received them. The research came up with the findings that the branded advertisements effected 32% awareness on the people approached. It further indicated that 22% of the mobile phone users who received the advertisements were willing to buy the products should they go to the markets. The research measured these opinions from about 600 male consumers between the ages of 16 to 36 over a period of 5 weeks during the air of the advertisements. The study concluded that single advertisements strongly increase advertisement awareness and probability of purchase. (Brown, 2008) Another research done in the US showed that about 93% of people who pass digital billboards tend to remember them while only 41% remember analogue billboards. New media is advantageous in the sense that it is dynamically flexible. New media and its application in the advertising industry has enabled the alteration of messages within no time unlike static messages. This has enable quick time marketing implementation that has seen profits of many organizations that have envisaged the use of new media in advertising their products, prosper. The unlimited amounts of messages that can be sent using new media via the internet has also made this advanced technology in communication be appreciated as advertisers can relay a number of advertisements over a short period of time. This is one distinct feature of new media that is not witness in other outdoor advertisement mediums. New media has lowered costs for the advertising industry making it more profitable in this current time of its use. This can be observed in comparison with print media advertising where expenses incurred in purchase of paper, ink and other auxiliary requirements are removed. Furthermore other costs such as painting and shipment costs are not incurred as every aspect of the advertisement can be done adaptively using the computer in conjunction with the internet services. Another important advantage of new media to advertising is effect of an instant turn around in an organization. Rather than wait patiently for the preparation of a traditional static billboard for ages, a digital billboard can be designed and uploaded in less time to an advertisement spots in a region and ready to run. This saves time for the advertising company as well as the costs that it would incur in tying to identify a place strategic enough to put up such an advertisement. Again new media portrays an adaptable kind of messaging where product brand manufacturers can make use of developed sign networks to develop industrious ideas to capture the consumer market. This can be used to market products in a way that portrays and embodies the unique tastes of people by making it suitable to all age groups and genders. Its uniqueness in terms of video compared to static media, provides mobile pictures that are utilized more often. This easily captures the attention of potential customers to the advertised brands compared to static advertisements that seems dull. With every successful venture, there always arise flaws and new media is no exception. Though focus has tended much on the merits of new media in advertising, potential flaws have not been evaluated. One such disadvantage is that new media advertising depends mainly on the internet services to reach potential clients for their products. This makes new media advertising beneficial to nations where investment on the internet service provisions has extensively grown. This then exclude developing nations where internet accessibility is low implying that awareness of traded products is very low. This is heightened by the low budget allocation to the internet that worsens the situation. Another factor that seems to make new media advertising a disadvantage is that there is no proper way to track expenditure of internet advertising. According to an analyst Medadows-Klue (2007) on his article citing the title "what is spent on the web creative'" he indicates that at least no where in the world is the production expenditure on the World Wide Web services accurately accounted for. This means that advertising agencies could be running their businesses in the assumption that new media advertising is cheap which might be the contrary. Organizations might be incurring losses due to this technology yet they are not aware which might see businesses fail due to sudden unexplained declarations of bankruptcy. These results establishes by Meldoes-Klue are in relation with the outcomes of the UK's new media market. The UK is considered to be the pioneer in new media applications that was initiated with the early acquisition of broad band internet services coupled with the fact that UK was a country with a remarkable high usage of personal computers. His extrapolation of the saturation of the UK's new media market makes it hard to do business there and hence provides advice for nations that have not developed the new media capacity, to implement it with caution albeit it's many advantages. Design industry New media has also been advantageous in the design industry. Video game productions have improved over the years thanks to new media technology that uses digital programming. Three dimensional animations have been able to be created by new media designing translating to virtual realities that have come to resemble the real world that we live in. Initially, three dimensional production as sound synthesis was unattainable before the advent of digital technology. Two dimensional animations where the only ones being produced with the former design technologies. New media has enabled the advancement in game mechanics by enabling the development of soft wares that enable the end users of the games to obtain the maximum enjoyment and or satisfaction. An example of this development in the video game design industry is the Spinout. This is a video game that was produced by a UK based video game developer. The game has been introduced in to the popularized play station game console. It is a car racing game that has seen it enjoyment exhibited in its high sales. In the music industry, new media has brought in new developments that have made music production quite interesting and simple to execute such as synthesised vocal sound production. This is in comparison to the times before the application of new media that saw music producers going in to strenuous levels to try and obtain rare sounds that they could rhythmically introduce into their musical sound beats. This could be seen in the way they used tape recorders to capture sounds as that of the shot of a gun, or splashing water all of which can be produced by digital media on a computer rather than going long miles and dangerous locations just to capture a sound. (Thompson, 1995, p 150) New media has also been advantageous to the industry of music which the design and advertising industry depends on by enabling the storage of high content music in to small music CDs, DVDs and MP3s. This has resulted in the diminished use of record albums that were more expensive compared to the recent disks. According to a press release by BBC News inn the year 2008, music sales was reported high and it had grown by about 27% in terms of digital formats like MP3s and ring tones. This was attributed to lower price of music down loads and additionally due to the fact that there was a high tendency of people to purchase whole music albums from the internet. The disadvantage of new media to the music design industry has caused degradation in the professionalism of this industry. The synthetically made vocals have made musicians take advantage of this to sing songs that do not portray their true natural sound, making it be assumed that present day musicians to not have pleasant voices compared to the former ones who depended on their sole natural voices to entertain. Another disadvantage of the digital media is that it has resulted in to the high rates of piracy. Musicians are not getting the fare earn of their work as unscrupulous people copy their digitized musicals and sell them to other people without obeying the copyrights of the products containing the music. This his related to the music CD's and MP3 that carry the musical work that can be played in the advanced music players such as the MP3, CD and DVD players. Hence, piracy from new media technology has made business profits in the music industry palmate. Musicians are not financial well kept as the former ones who used record albums to store and sell their music. New media has made it impossible to ensure the copyrights of musical products are complied with since a majority of people world wide have access to a personal computer where they can retrieve the music for free. According to a research done in the UK music market in 2007 by Entertainment media research, it was found that about 40% of the 1600 people who participated in the research, agreed to have in one time or more to illegal music down loading. This research attributed to the new media telecommunication advancement that has opened social networking sites that has enabled people discover new music that they would hardly find in local radio and Television programmes. The research observed that this statistic was an apparent rise compared to one that was done in the year 2005 where the recorded percentage of 34%. Additionally, it found that most of the participants were not much concerned with the law that prohibited this practise with music pirates said to be at 19% from its previous 7% in 2006. (Soulxtc, 2007) New media has also advanced into the electronics designing. Electronic media industry has focused into the digital world from its former analogue. The advantages of digital media are expressed in the storage capacity as they present more space in small sized instruments which are often reusable. Digital photography and printing as an outcome of new media has caused the development of this profession as photography work has been made much faster and less prone to damages in photos compared to the use of dark rooms to prepare photos which required a high level of skill. This is in contrast to digital photography that is less skill involving and the product outcomes are of good quality as they are not affected by production processes like in the dark room. Digital photography has been applied in the movie making industry and its advantage has been portrayed in the costs that have been minimised in trying to produce good films. The use of digital photography in development of graphics for movie purposes has reduced the burden of editing movies by redoing scene shots. This has consequently cut down on the time of doing movies such that they quickly reach the movie screens and video stores. It has enabled the creation of cartoon characters that are aired in local TV stations or in animated movies. This approached has consequently been applied in the marketing and advertising industry to boost sale of branded products. The advantage with animation in the advertisement industry is that it provides entertainment to the potential clients while acknowledging a specific brand of product. Further in to the design industry, new media has impacted the transport sector by bringing in technological advancements in vehicles that has since improved safety conditions of motor vehicles. For example the Europe based transport technologies company MIRA, provides an immense number of motor vehicle features based on computer aided designs that have fostered efficiency in the cars. Fields relating to safety, aerodynamics and other technical aspects of technology have been applied thus exhibiting the advantageous use of new media all over the world. The company employs a mixture of computer aided engineering that arises from new media and other tools incorporated with physical techniques to create highly accurate and representative models of motor vehicles. (Castells, Manuel, 1996) New media has also be linked to web design development that has facilitated communication by creating social networking sites such as face book, video sharing sites among others. The advantages of new media to web design industry has seen people get connected with each other through the social networking sites and make friends with other people through out the globe by browsing these many sites that are available in the internet services. People can now be able to transact business through the internet using sites such as e-bay that provide marketing space for people for their products in the global market. Another advantage of new media to the web design industry is that it provides video conferencing where by people at different geographical locations can be able to hold meetings at real time through web casting options. However, the advantage of this technological to the web design industry is that it is susceptible to acts of crime such as money laundering. Occasions of terrorism can also be promoted and this has caused the UK government to declare strategies that can be used to monitor the activities of that take place in the World Wide Web. The UK government in this example was stated in a bulletin of March 2009 by BBC news stating that, "social sites such as face book were soon to be monitored should proposals by the UK government be passed in parliament''." (Simmons, Dorking, Surrey, 2009) This was stated by the UK home office as a strategy intended to curb crime gangs and terrorists groups who might take advantage of these sites. Another disadvantage of new media as related to web design industry is that of pornography. Many sights portraying pornographic have infiltrated the web and thus posses a danger in terms of moral degradation to children considered to be minors. Curbing this vice is a tussle and impossible to eliminate to protect minors, therefore it depends on the websites morals to try and discourage minors from visiting the sites. However, this is still difficult especially in the developed nations where minors might be having their own personal computers connected to the internet. This further depends with parental advice is this problem can be managed. Conclusion New media has come with many advantages that have impacted on the design and advertisement industries differently. Its interactive ness has resulted in positive aspects in where it has been applied. However, negative consequences have also emerged in certain circumstances but this are largely out weighted by the many merits that have come to be applied to accelerate globalization all over the world. References Castells, Manuel, (1996). Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: economy, Society and Culture. Volume 1, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishing. Millward Brown UK, (2008). Millward brown and aerodeon conduct first research project to measure effectiveness of mobile phone advertisement. Press release Oct. 2007. Retrieved on May 1st 2009. From http://www.dynamiclogic.com/eu/pressroom/release/'id=557 Simmons, Dorking, Surrey, (2009). Social network sites monitored. BBC News (Online). Retrieved on May 1st 2009. From http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7962631.stm Soultxt, (2007). UK Music Piracy at an All-Time high. Zero Paid. Retrieved on May 1st 2009. From http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8949/uk_piracy_at_an_alltime_high Thompson, J B. (1995). The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, p 150 Read More