Whether big or small, every business battles with this question. From the very inception of the advertising campaign, deciding your budget, who is your target audience, how you want to promote your product, what your strategy is, etc. When you figure all that out and get your completed product, you now want to display it for the world to see. Unfortunately, some companies fail to consider the impact of where they may place their advertisements. Some companies only look at the bottom line when placing advertisements on social media.
I get so many “hits” when I blast my ads on this website, “it says so in the marketing research!” So, they write the check and send in their ad. But consumers see that the website that your ad is being run on promotes blogs for racial violence. Is that the image you want for your company? These are things that you need to consider.
If a company uses a website promoting untested scientific data or what is commonly accepted as hate speech, the company would consider it unethical. At the very least, I would find the business to have very immoral values and choose not to associate with them as that wouldn’t be the image I would want to be associated with my business.
We must consider that “we derive our ethics from the interplay of values” (Kubasek, 2020, pp 24). Therefore, if your company image reflects your values and ethics, advertising on a “sketchy” website is probably not the way to show the public that you are an upstanding place to do business.
Always ensure that when you hire a third-party company to do your advertisement work, you do your due diligence and research the company. Don’t just look at the company website or Facebook page for their reviews. Sometimes, those can be fabricated reviews. Instead, you should check the Better Business Bureau, LinkedIn, and other reputable sites to ensure that this company is in good standing with peers and clients. Don’t trust your business in other people’s hands.
Sally Houle
Reference:
Kubasek, N.K., Browne, M.N., Dhooge, L.J., Herron, D.J., & Barkacs, L.L., (2020). 1-4. Dynamic Business Law, 5th Edition. (pp. 1-97). McGraw-Hill Education.
