Commercialism on the Internet

Commercialism has been around since people have been making money, from television, radio, posters, and various publications, ads and commercials are everywhere. Over the past few years the new commercial trend seems to be the Internet due to its massive increase in users, and convenience in the corporate world. Due to the immensity of the internet this issue of commercialism has stemmed past the corporate world and into the hands of such people as hate groups, and others who seek to conform youths to their philosophies. As you can see this Internet commercialization is a two-sided affair.

For a company or business to be successful there has to be a certain amount of commercialization involved, nowadays it seems that the best way for a company to advertise itself is on the internet, since everything is going digital, or global. Since each market has it’s own age targets, the Internet allows ads that are meant to be seen by each target market be mostly seen by the people that is intended for. “Approximately 67% of online teens purchase items online and about 37% of online children purchase items online, and it has been projected that by 2002 children will be spending $1.3 billion per year on Internet transactions.” (http://www.pwc.k12.nf.ca/webmasters). This gives companies the business they need, and simultaneously boosts the economy (to a degree). All these points give big thumbs up to Internet commercialism, but there is another side to the issue, otherwise it wouldn’t be considered an issue.

The dark side of Internet commercializing isn’t so obvious at first glance; you have to look beneath the surface to see what it’s all about. Companies view children, and minors as the “ideal consumer” because internet transactions are very simple, and the youth of today are the first generation to grow in the “digital era”, as well as the fact that children now have more spending power than they once did. The dark side resides under the skin of various online surveys’ that are popular with young people, tracking technologies, and cookies. When someone fills out a survey of personal information and interests, chances are that information is being used by a company to increase its knowledge of its target market. Now that a company has the information it needs about its market they are able to make the perfect advertisements that appeal directly to the people they want it to. This hardly seems to be a fair, and justified way to go about advertising.

My stand on this issue is that it’s wrong, business’, and corporations are wrongfully using the Internet to obtain information about their target markets with very few of their customers knowing what has happened. I see it as an invasion of privacy, and it should be stopped. It is a know fact that numerous teen oriented web sites have come to agreements with major companies for online ads and sponsorship. There was a time, in the early days of the internet when it was commercial free, it was used only for communication and education, it’s still used for these reasons today, but the internet has become terribly over commercial and somewhat burdensome to use because of this.

Money makes the world go around, and nothing is ever going to change that. Commercialization just seems to be going through the next stage of its evolution, just like the early homo-erectus evolving into the modern day homo-sapien, internet commercialization and robbing of information isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, it’s only going to get bigger. Unless someday there’ll be no use for the internet, which I don’t foresee coming anytime soon, but until then it’s important keep a somewhat skeptical frame of mind when using the internet, and use your common sense.

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