How Ethical Are Advertisers?

During the Frontline program Merchants of Cool, the advertising technique of stealth advertising is described.  Stealth advertising is a type of advertising that advertises to consumers without them knowing that they are seeing ads.  Product placement,where a product is effectively placed in a TV show or movie is a type of stealth advertising.  Over the past years, marketers have moved towards stealth marketing, away from traditional ads, like the ones that play during TV shows, or are printed in magazines. This article details one of the first large scale stealth marketing endeavors, which was an ad campaign for a new Samsung phone.  Instead of having traditional ads, they paid actors to go out in public, ask someone to take a photo with the phone, and then tell them all about how great a phone it was. The campaign was very successful, but the practice of having paid actors, or placing products in TV shows raises questions about ethics.  The traditional ads we think of are always pretty clear, telling you that a product is good and that you should buy it. You know when you're seeing the ad, and you know what it is for.  Yet, with stealth marketing, most of the time you don't even realize you're seeing an ad, and people often question the ethics of this unwanted, unknown ad.  However, for the most part, I feel that stealth marketing is ethical, at least in some cases. I'm completely fine with product placement, as that isn't necessarily passing on a wrong or incorrect image onto consumers.  However, once your each the point of hiring actors to gush about you're product, it does get a bit more unethical. Although I still don't feel that this is completely unethical, to many people it would.  To me it feels that there is little difference between having people being paid to act in commercials, or paying them to interact with possible consumers one on one.  The only difference is the scale, and level of outreach.  Sponsored posts on social media have also become far more popular, and while I wouldn't choose to advertise, unless it was for a product that I actually genuinely like, many people do.  I also feel hat this is mostly ethical, especially with current requirements for including things like #ad, or other things that indicate that a post is sponsored.  All in all, we should make sure that we are aware of the ads we see, and stay aware of techniques advertisers may use to get us to buy their product.