Unfortunately this is going to be a post where it was tough to find more "scholarly" resources, being a fairly recent event. I only recently heard about Adpocalypse from a video by Hank Green on the vlogbrothers YouTube channel, which was posted on the 21st of April, due to an insane backlog in my Watch Later playlist. I realised that it was linked to the 5th essay question:

"Explore a variety of media is used within the context of branding or transmedia storytelling. Does variety dilute the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or story?"

I'll try my best to explain and elaborate on why.

 Ads are everywhere. Brands are clamoring to get every millisecond on attention they can get out of you, and they will pay websites for every pixel or annoying pop up they can get.

Enter YouTube, the massive video-sharing social media site currently owned by Google. With billions and billions of total views on their videos, it is a pretty unique social media platform due to the fact that it shares ad revenue with its content creators. The most-subscribed YouTubers can earn up to the millions, excluding brand endorsements and sponsored videos, but even small time niche creators with a few thousand subscribers can get their small crumb from the proverbial pie.

Adpocalypse is a portmanteau of "Ad" from "advertising" and "Apocalypse". It is currently used to refer to YouTube taking drastic action to tighten their advertising algorithms after backlash from companies who were afraid that their brands were being advertised on videos which did not fit their corporate image. This happened around the 31st of March, with many channel owners noticing a sudden cut in revenue from YouTube.

"Grow your... Islamic State..?" (Dean, 2017)

Since then, the Adpocalypse restrictions have been loosened somewhat, but many YouTubers speculate that "things will never quite be the same".

Which brings us back to the essay topic.

Many companies have realised that a lot of their target demographic no longer use traditional media  like TV's or radios as much as YouTube for their entertainment. As brands shifted their ads to that 5-second space on a YouTube video before someone clicks "skip ad", a potential concern which they had failed to anticipate was the wide array of content available, and how viewers might perceive their brand's association with the videos they were advertising on.

"Does variety dilute the effectiveness of an advertising story or campaign?"

In this case, it seems like a very strong possibility. Ad placement can positively or negatively affect the impact and impression it makes to its audience. While YouTube is still a valuable advertising space, brands need to be careful not to end up being shown on the same page as terrorists or misogynists. While these mishaps are probably due to Google's Adsense tracking user data and cookies to target ads towards different users, the fact that a company's ads end up on a controversial video leads viewers to perceive it as tacit support towards that video.

As designers, it's important to be mindful of where your ads are being shown, and if possible, to utilise this link to maximise its impact. It's not just about what the ad is, but also what happens before, after, and while this ad is showing that can affect how it ends up being perceived.



References:
Dean, J. (2017). Screenshot of a banner ad on a video where two women hold up an ISIS banner. [image] Available at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7i7UItW4AAMMwK.jpg [Accessed 28 Jun. 2017].

Harris, R. (2017). Improving our brand safety controls. [online] Google. Available at: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-europe/improving-our-brand-safety-controls/ [Accessed 28 Jun. 2017].

Kim, J. (2012). The institutionalization of YouTube: From user-generated content to professionally generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 34(1), pp.53-67.

Ligato, L. (2015). YouTube Is Crushing Cable TV, According To Google. [online] HuffPost. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/youtube-vs-cable_us_55acf44fe4b0d2ded39f5370 [Accessed 28 Jun. 2017].

Pashkevich, M., Dorai-Raj, S., Kellar, M. and Zigmond, D. (2012). Empowering Online Advertisements by Empowering Viewers with the Right to Choose. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(4), pp.451-457.

On the 10th of June, my class went on a trip to some art galleries. In this post, I will mainly be talking about a piece of artwork which caught my attention from the Ilham Contemporary Forum.

The Ilham Contemporary Forum has 7 different curators and features artwork from 27 artists, This exhibition is further broken down into four "grouping"s, which are titled
(i) “play, negotiation, resistance”;
(ii) “discomfort”;
(iii) “reassemble”; and
(iv) “archive, narrative, world”

The Soil Is Not Mine is a project by Tan Zi Hao which he started in 2013. The artist started this project by filling up 50 plastic packets with soil from Malay Reservation Lands, soil from the artist's home, a torn copy of the artist's birth certificate, and the artist's sperm. He then traded each bag of soil with the people around him, with the only condition for trade being that the person needs to convince the artist that the object traded has "Bumiputera value".

The final product was a case filled with various items, each with a number describing what it was and how it was traded with the artist.

Yes, that small glass bottle contains human saliva

An empty glove? Nope, apparently it's filled with air exhaled from the artist's friend.

(Can you tell I like alliteration yet?)

Once more I venture into the world of blogs, primarily because I have to. Similar to last semester, I'll begin by breaking down each question in a more in-depth manner before choosing one to focus on.

Originally I had intended on making one post with all the questions like I did last semester, but after finishing the first question, I realised it would be way too long. I promise I'm not trying to inflate my blog post numbers, and you can choose to count all five of them as one post if you want.


1. Critically review a local art/ design exhibition in-depth. Discuss it in terms of its curatorial goals and exhibition design with related research.  

Many Malaysians might be surprised to find that there are more local art exhibitions than they realise. Besides the usual big-shots like the National Visual Arts Gallery Malaysia, there is much to be explored in other spaces like the small-scale but posh like Artcube; reputable and contemporary Ilham Gallery; or vape-filled tiny indie spaces like Minut Init.

Art and design exhibitions might have a single featured artist, or curate artworks from different local artists. The term "curatorial goals" refers to the motive of the artist or the curator in showing those specific pieces of artwork. Whether it's to convey a certain mood or political message, what is exhibited is intricately tied together with why it is there.

"Exhibition design" might refer to the layout or floor plan of the exhibit. Is it audience directed from one piece of artwork to another, or allowed to wander randomly? Are the pieces linked visually or separated? It might also feature different mediums in which the art is conveyed - is there audio to accompany the visual? Is the artwork interactive in some way? Exhibition design can be just as important as the curated art content, and influences the way the intended message is delivered to the audience.

Personally, I'm not ruling out choosing this as my essay topic, but I don't have an exhibition that I'm certain I'll be able to write about yet. But in the meantime, I'll try to keep my eyes and ears out for as many local exhibits as possible and find one that I might able to do justice for if I wrote about it.