Role of Ethics in Digital Marketing

This article discusses the ethical issues and challenges in digital marketing, including spamming, use of personal data, and misleading advertisements. It also provides recommendations for improving ethical practices in digital marketing.

Running head: DIGITAL MARKETING
DIGITAL MARKETING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Article Analysis..........................................................................................................................2
Issues and challenges:............................................................................................................2
Limitations and Implications:................................................................................................3
Recommendations......................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
Marketing of services, product or idea including the application of Internet, digital
technologies, display advertising and mobile applications reflects the meaning of Digital
marketing (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2019). The concept of digital marketing includes,
Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), influencer marketing,
content marketing, e-commerce marketing, data-driven marketing, social media optimization
and display advertising (Järvinen and Karjaluoto 2015). The paper will focus on the ethical
issues and challenges from the article about, Role of ethics in digital marketing, which
reflects consumer’s perception about the medium selected by brands for digital marketing.
The paper will demonstrate the challenges followed by the limitation in the implication of
ethical framework. The paper will present recommendations for improving the association
ethics in digital marketing.
Article Analysis
Issues and challenges:
The article discusses about the ethical factors and challenges associated with the
practice of utilizing digital marketing as an advertising medium. One of the issues identified
in context of ethics in digital marketing is the understanding of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in terms of
control over internet. Internet is treated as the medium of sharing views and ideas freely, the
concept of the right content or topic is difficult to assess in the digital marketing. Another
ethical issue identified in the article is spamming, which is disproportionate advertising
practices by repeatedly promoting an idea, product or services in a selected website (Singla et
al. 2017). Spamming can be observed in the form of email, social media advertising and in
the form of messages. The article highlighted the issue by the useless nature of the
advertisements as these displayed advertisements are not targeted to specific group of
consumers as they are randomly sent by the advertisers in the form of a text message or
display picture (Singla et al. 2017). Another issue identified in the article is the use of
personal data by the brands, in the research for unethical practices in regards with digital
marketing, the issue was not based on the factor of using person data but the case of not being
informed about the process of utilization offends the consumers (Singla et al. 2017). One of
the associated issues of ‘using personal data and information’ is the outcome of syncing the
consumer accounts with the advertising companies, results in the negative perception of the
consumers even for a relevant content. Another issue identified in the article is the display of

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misleading advertisements. Misleading ads can be in the form of ad links on the website
or/and in the form of pop-ups, it can lead directly to the advertisement page and can be
completely unrelated to the target audiences’ preferences. The unethical way of forcing ads
on consumers or audience by the brands by eliminating the option of skipping the ad or
avoiding the displayed ad can also be considered as one of the major issues.
One of the real life issues reflected by the leading social media company, Facebook
was selling or letting other companies use their personal data. The personal data from
Facebook was used by companies like, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft (Golbeck and
Mauriello 2016). Personal data of the Facebook users were utilized for customizing and/or
understanding the customer preferences (Förster and Weish 2017). Although, the intentions
may not be destructive but the use of data without the knowledge of consumers/audience can
be considered unethical or invading the personal space of the users. H&M was involved in an
unethical advertising campaign, which was considered racist. Modelling a hoodie with the
content of ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’ (Falk, Nielsen and Hoffmann 2018). YouTube is
known for displaying ads in middle of a creator’s video. YouTube created opportunity for the
creator for improving their revenue stream by choosing option of non-skippable ads.
Although, the option do not force the option but tempt with the positive opportunity for the
content creator. This strategy will benefit the advertisers, content creator and YouTube but it
will be negatively perceived by the consumers for being forcibly exposed to ad content.
Limitations and Implications:
Digital marketing is considered to be one of the most important tool for advertising
content for a product, service or idea. The tool can be productively used for accomplishing
the reach the value offerings. The reach of the advertisers can be perceived negatively in the
scenario where the benefit is only linked to the brand. One of the limitations of implying
ethics in digital marketing can be the judgment regarding the ‘right and wrong’ in society.
The main medium of digital marketing is the application of Internet (Chaffey and Smith
2017). Internet is supposedly for sharing views and ideas freely with rest of the world or
friends in the account. Assessing the advertised content based on the grounds of customers’
perception is very challenging (McStay 2016). Another issue that can be linked to the
implication of ethics in digital marketing is the challenge of customizing advertising content
by utilizing the available personal information of the consumers (users) without invading the
personal space of the consumers.

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One of the limitations of implying ethics in digital marketing can be the impact of the
planned and/or paid advertisement, focusing on the perception and ethical constraints for the
advertisement can lead to the unproductive impact of the strategized ad. Technological
flexibility can be another issue for the purpose of implying ethical constraints in the medium
of digital marketing. Understanding the ethical constraints related to benefiting most of the
people in relation to an audio, imagery or video message can be very challenging based on
technological capabilities. Moreover, targeting a specific group consumers can only be
facilitated through the option of using personal data and information of the social networking
site users.
Recommendations
The recommendations for improving the challenging situation of the brands for utilizing the
efficient tool of digital marketing are as follows:
 Agreeing to the factor of using personal information by an option by the social
networking site can be utilized for the factor of including ethical practice in digital
marketing (Tagg et al. 2017).
 Using the strategy of using data posting pattern instead of personal information for
customizing digital media advertisement can result in the security of personal space of
the consumers or users and will eliminate the hassle of understanding consumers’
perception about sharing information (Krajnović, Sikirić and Bosna 2016).
 Using the theory of utilitarianism for assessing a digital marketing campaign can help
in designing and implementing the campaign in the manner, which can benefit
majority of the associated people.
 Consumer targeting techniques like, understanding the behavioral pattern from the
‘posts’ in social media platforms, using Google analytics tools for understanding the
most productive segment (group of users), these results can be used as ad groups by
the companies without invading the personal space (Stephen 2016).

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 Remarketing can be used by understanding the preference of the customers through
the activities like, ‘clicks’, remarketing will involve the technique of advertising the
same ad (preferred by the users) in other popular sites (Ryan 2016).
 Understanding the preferences of the social media users by their search analysis for
designing the keywords and ad content for digital marketing (Waldman 2016).
 Investment for improving technological infrastructure for developing the
understanding about consumer behavioral pattern and preferences rather than in paid
views and reviews (can disrupt the associated trust).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded from the paper that the use of digital marketing tool
can be incorporated by a strategic planning process. The planning phase should be focused on
the ethical constraints and customer preferences of the audience without invading the privacy
of the digital media users. Understanding the behavioral pattern of the users by analytics
tools, digital media techniques and avoiding forced advertisement can respond to the
challenges in integrating ethics with digital marketing.

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