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Online Advertising: Censorship and Sexuality
Tyler J. Immethun
Maryville University
University Seminar
Dr. Ted Gounelos
September 21, 2009
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Abstract
Advertisers must go where their customers are, and increasingly their customers are
online. As the amount of information on the internet grows, so does the amount of time people
spend on it. Advertising has a very powerful presence online, from banner ads to floating ads, to
search engine and video ads. Internet advertising is one of the best ways to advertise because of
the ability to effectively target a specific audience and to reach the greatest number of people
(The Advantages of Internet Advertising vs. Traditional Advertising , 2008). As well, the old
saying sex sells also applies online, maybe even more so. Using sex in online ads captures your
attention and makes you view the ad, and it may be more successful online because usually you
are surfing the net by yourself, so it’s a more personal experience. Sex appeal definitely
increases the effectiveness of an ad and is used extremely often. But why are companies able to
show these ads online while they are being censored on television? Less regulation online allows
the companies to show their original ads. Companies use this to their advantage by using the
censorship on mainstream media to attract the viewers online, convergence culture.
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Censorship is not a new thing to us, it has been around for many centuries. It exists in
politics, literature, art, music, and obviously advertisements. One of the biggest controversies
even exists in children’s literature, in the book Harry Potter. The Potter books, which are written
for the young adult/teen market, deal with sorcery and magic. Harry is a wizard who knows
spells and fights dragons and such. Some Christian groups are trying to get the book banned
because they claim that it promotes witchcraft (History of Censorship).
The word sex has many different meanings, from the biological meaning to the emotional
meaning to the action, sex is a vague term. But sex in advertising is fairly straightforward and
simple. The ads use models, nudity, and sexual expressive material to grab the viewer’s attention
and to draw them to the ad to learn more about a product or service. Online advertising has
become one of the largest mediums to advertise, so as a result, more sex in advertising is being
found online.
The single most popular term online is sex, not the word itself, but in some form. Why is
sex the number one online search, because sex is constantly on people’s minds because of their
physical and emotional needs. Sex Sells! Is this a good or bad thing? Sex has transformed over
the last few decades from something that was dirty to a natural part of a relationship, but has this
made sex a free for all. STD’s and teen pregnancy is on the rise because of how loose sex is
portrayed in the media and especially online. But companies don’t care, all they want is a profit
and one of the best ways to do that is to use sex in their advertising.
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Advertising has evolved greatly over the last few decades. Years ago, the best way to
promote a product was through the local newspaper. This gave businesses a way to reach their
potential customers. Shortly thereafter, national newspapers became the standard way of
reaching even more potential consumers. Businesses then began to use the radio to reach an even
greater number of people. The advent of television brought about an even greater way to
advertise and reach more customers. Television gave corporations the first chance to really
“show” their products to consumers, and video ads provided a better understanding of a product
or service. Now, the digital age gives us a new means of promoting products. This type of
advertising reaches a very large number of people and is the most effective. A recent poll on
CNN.com, for instance, determined that consumers feel that for businesses in the U.S.," internet
has become a necessity (Bannister, 2008).” Many companies are also delving into the social
networking sites as another very effective free way to advertise.
However, the sheer number of websites, and the even greater number of ads on these
websites, means that online companies need to find new and better ways to reach and retain
consumers without high costs, so to attract the attention of online viewers, sexual content is
being used in an increasing number of ads. That being said, this is the main reason why online
advertising is a better advertising method than traditional methods. Millions of customers are
searching the internet for the products and services they require, so most companies have
realized that they can reach out to a much larger number of customers through the Internet.
Does sex sell? We’re surrounded by all kinds of advertisements competing to get us to
buy their product. Everywhere we look, we see attractive women and/or men associated with
these products because it is an attention grabber; it makes you look at the ad. Sex appeal
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increases the effectiveness of an ad by being able to raise your natural curiosity and grab your
attention with sex. So the answer is yes, sex sells, but only when it is done in good taste.
Many ads get banned by the FCC from television each and every year. Why are these ads
getting banned? Are they being banned because of their sexual content like they claim, or is there
something else? Could it be that there is some political reason behind the censorship?
A few examples of companies that use this censorship to their advantage are
godaddy.com and the “Go Veg” campaign from PETA. These ads use sexually explicit material
and have been banned from television or they had censored versions created for TV. But online,
you can view the original ads with all the sexual content. These companies actually feed of this
censorship on television because they know people will want to see the original ad and will go
online to find it. The internet doesn’t have restrictions like television so they are able to show the
original versions. But why were they banned from the TV, was it because of the sex or
something else?
In the PETA ads in particular, they use sex in them to attract your attention yes, but is
there a political reason they are censored? Many people would argue that PETA ads aren’t
political, but they are. They are obviously telling you about a particular lifestyle that they want
you to follow, but they also may throw things in about laws or political candidates as well.
When sexuality is used in advertising, certain messages are portrayed. The message may
be that innocence is sexy, or that women come with the product (Budweiser), or that you will be
more attractive to the opposite sex. That is why using sex in ads is so effective, it gets your
attention and then leaves a message in your head like one I talked about above. Like Freud
claimed, everything we do is motivated by sex, apparently, even buying toilet paper.
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Advertising is one of the most important tasks a company has and must be done well.
Through the use of sexual content a company can create effective and memorable ads for their
customers. As long as they don’t use controversial imagery and are able to grab the viewer’s
attention without completely distracting them from the product, the ad will be very effective.
I want to focus on a group of people whom you wouldn’t expect to use sex in ads, but
they often do. This group is known as PETA or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
They use many hot models in their ads to attract people’s attention. They use woman surrounded
by vegetables as seen in Figures 1-4, and woman with adorable animals as seen in figures 5 and
6. The reason PETA uses sex in their ads is because a lot of models support them and they need
to catch the attention of a large group of people. They are able to use all these ads online because
the Internet is not as regulated as newspapers or TV. These ads were banned or censored from
airing during the superbowl, they deemed the ads “too hot for TV.” There are many ads for
PETA that are online that were banned from television. But is having their ads banned from
television a good or bad thing? They use this to their advantage. They know people will want to
see the ooriginal ad and find out why they couldn’t air it on TV, so they will go to their website
to find it. By visiting PETA’s website, you can view the ads that were not suitable for televison.
(PETA.ORG).
They use the motto “Veggie Love” to sell their idea. They really don’t have a product to
sell, but they are trying to sell a cause, a lifestyle. They want to stop the killing of animals and
make everyone go vegeterian. I think that by using sex in their ads, they have captured the
attention of many people whom they otherwise wouldn’t have. Almost everyone knows who
PETA is, mainly because of all the sexual ads and models who support them.
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PETA’s ads, just like any other ads, work on the concept of having that underlying
message. The message that says, if you buy our product, or become a vegeterian in this case, you
will get attention from these beautiful women and attract many beautiful women in your life.
Another ad campaign I would like to focus on is the Axe Shower Gel ads. These ads use
young guys showering and women coming out of the woodwork to get to them. They use hot
women and a lot of them. Many of Axe’s ads have been banned from television, but unlike
PETA, I think their ads were banned strictly because of their sexual content. They are still able to
use this convergence culture, like Henry Jenkins talks about in his book, by feeding of the media
of television to attract people to view their ads on another type of media, the internet. This ads
are very eye catching, and are overall effective.
This paper should have shown how sex does sell. Also, sex is only effective if the
company realizes that that is only the attention grabber, only one part of getting a customer to
buy your product. The only downside to using sex to sell is that viewers might only remember
the hot girl and not your company’s name, but if you hand out lots of fliers and business cards
you can solve that problem (Friedmann, 2009). Another important topic this paper addressed is
how the internet feeds of mainstream media giving us this convergence culture. The internet uses
the censorship of the television to its advantage.
Hopefully, this paper was able to desribe the industry of online advertising, give an
insight into how sex sells, and how censorship, for whatever reason, may not be an entirely bad
thing. Sex appeal in ads is very controversial yet very successful. It appears mostly online
because of the strict regualtions set forth by the government for television. The online world of
advertising is filled with the types of ads pictured below, that really capture your attention and
some that remain in your mind for a long period of time.
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Works Cited

Mater, A. (2008, July 8). Pay-Per-Click Advertising vs. Traditional Online Advertising.
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
(2001). Retrieved September 25, 2009, from Online Advertising:
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
Advertising on the Internet. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2009, from Benchmark
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
Brain, M. (1998). How Web Advertising Works. Retrieved September 25, 2009, from
How Stuff Works: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising6.htm
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MacMillan, D. (2009, January 28). What Works In Online Advertising. Retrieved
September 25, 2009, from EBSCO:
http://proxy.library.maryville.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ma
ryville.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=36360094&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Marshall, P. (2004, January 23). Advertising Overload. Retrieved September 25, 2009,
from CQ Researcher:
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http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.library.maryville.edu/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqr
esrre2004012300&type=hitlist&num=1

Online Advertising. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2009, from Ecommerce:
http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/16/Advertising-Online.html

History of Censorship. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 7, 2009, from Angel Fire:
http://www.angelfire.com/vt2/UnitedStudents/history.html

Stanley, B. (2008, January 23). Online Versus Print Advertising. Retrieved September 25,
2009, from Red Scrubs: http://redscrubs.com/2008/01/online-versus-print-advertising

http://advertising.about.com/library/weekly/aa082801a.htm

http://www.transtutors.com/forums/Assignment-Help/6/447/social,-economical-andlegal-implications-of-adver.htm

http://creativebits.org/inspiration/does_sex_advertising_sells
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SEXINADVERTISING.COM
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