PRID301 - Stuart Gardner

Aims: This dissertation intends to look at corporate advertising and how it is becoming increasingly common for organisations to sign up to websites such as YouTube and MySpace, and use them as an advertising tool. It hopes to answer several questions: Does this form of advertising invade privacy? Is it right that advertising should use social networks to reach niche markets? Is the information provided by individuals online used any differently to advertising in old media formats?

These questions shall be answered from both sides of the argument, looking at 'hits' generated by lonelygirl15, a fictional video blog, before and after it was 'exposed', compared to video posts which do not hide what they are - bands, amateur animators, directors, then comparing both to old media advertising for it's target market.

The expected results of this research are that it is becoming more prevailant for companies to use blogs and other Web 2.0 websites to reach a target market, which has supposedly been difficult to reach before. It is expected to show that the purchase of MySpace by Rupert Murdoch, was not to help develop the technology, but to use it's advertising space to promote TV series run on Fox or Sky, film made by Twentieth Century Fox, and newspapers published by News Corporation.