Elämänmuutoksen, jännityksen ja asiantuntijuuden representointi Veikkaus Oy:n mainonnassa vuosina 1970— 2006

Aim of this master's thesis paper for consumer economics, is to research gambling advertisements in Finland over a period of 35 years, from 1970 to 2006. Veikkaus Oy (later Veikkaus), was founded in 1940, as one of the three licensed gambling organizations in Finland. Material for the current research comprised 1494 advertisements published by Veikkaus in newspapers and magazines at that time. Veikkaus has the exclusive licence to organize lotto games, sport games, instant games and other draw games in Finland. The other two operators, The Finnish Slot Machine Association RAY and Fintoto (on-track horse betting), were not included in the current analysis. This study has been completed according to research contract and grand by the Finnish Foundation for Gaming Research (Pelitoiminnan tutkimussäätiö). In general, advertisements reflect surrounding culture and time, and their message is built on stratified meanings, symbols and codes. Advertising draws the viewer's attention, introduces the advertised subject, and finally, affects the individual's consumption habits. However, advertisements not only work on individual level, but also influence public perception of the advertised product. Firstly, in order to assess gambling as a phenomenon, this paper discusses gambling as consumer behaviour, and also reviews history of gambling in Finland. Winning is a major feature of gambling, and dreaming about positive change of life is a centre of most gambling ads. However, perceived excitement through risk of losing can also be featured in gambling ads. Secondly, this study utilizes Veikkaus’ large advertising archives, were advertising data is analyzed by content analysis and the semiotic analysis. Two methods have been employed to support analyzing outcome in a synergistic way. Content analysis helps to achieve accuracy and comprehensiveness. Semiotic analysis allows deeper and more sensitive analysis to emerged findings and occurrences. It is important to understand the advertised product, as advertising is bound to the culture and time. Hence, to analyze advertising, it is important to understand the environment where the ads appear. Content analysis of Veikkaus data discovered the main gambling and principal advertisement style for each.period. Interestingly, nearly half of Veikkaus’ advertisements promoted topic other than “just winning the bet”. Games of change, like Lotto, typically advertised indirectly represented dreams about winning. In the category of skill gambling, features were represented as investment, and the excitement of sporting expertise was emphasized. In addition, there were a number of gambling ads that emphasize social responsibility of Veikkaus as a government guided organization. Semiotic methods were employed to further elaborate on findings of content analysis. Dreaming in the advertisements was represented by the product of symbols, (e.g. cars and homes) that were found to have significance connection with each other. Thus, advertising represents change of life obtained by the winning. Interestingly, gambling ads promoting jackpots were often representing religious symbolisms. Ads promoting social responsibility were found to be the most common during economical depression of the 90’s. Deeper analysis showed that at that time, advertisements frequently represented depression-related meanings, such as unemployment and bank loans. Skill gaming ads were often represented by sports expertise – late 90’s, their number started sky rocketing, and continued increasing until 2006 (when this study ended). One may conclude that sport betting draws its meanings from the relevant consumer culture, and from the rules and features of the betted sport.

Investigating online reading with eye tracking and EEG : The influence of text format, reading task and parafoveal stimuli on reading processes

Research on reading has been successful in revealing how attention guides eye movements when people read single sentences or text paragraphs in simplified and strictly controlled experimental conditions. However, less is known about reading processes in more naturalistic and applied settings, such as reading Web pages. This thesis investigates online reading processes by recording participants eye movements. The thesis consists of four experimental studies that examine how location of stimuli presented outside the currently fixated region (Study I and III), text format (Study II), animation and abrupt onset of online advertisements (Study III), and phase of an online information search task (Study IV) affect written language processing. Furthermore, the studies investigate how the goal of the reading task affects attention allocation during reading by comparing reading for comprehension with free browsing, and by varying the difficulty of an information search task. The results show that text format affects the reading process, that is, vertical text (word/line) is read at a slower rate than a standard horizontal text, and the mean fixation durations are longer for vertical text than for horizontal text. Furthermore, animated online ads and abrupt ad onsets capture online readers attention and direct their gaze toward the ads, and distract the reading process. Compared to a reading-for-comprehension task, online ads are attended to more in a free browsing task. Moreover, in both tasks abrupt ad onsets result in rather immediate fixations toward the ads. This effect is enhanced when the ad is presented in the proximity of the text being read. In addition, the reading processes vary when Web users proceed in online information search tasks, for example when they are searching for a specific keyword, looking for an answer to a question, or trying to find a subjectively most interesting topic. A scanning type of behavior is typical at the beginning of the tasks, after which participants tend to switch to a more careful reading state before finishing the tasks in the states referred to as decision states. Furthermore, the results also provided evidence that left-to-right readers extract more parafoveal information to the right of the fixated word than to the left, suggesting that learning biases attentional orienting towards the reading direction.

Nonneutral network and the role of bargaining power in side payments

Representatives of several Internet access providers have expressed their wish to see a substantial change in the pricing policies of the Internet. In particular, they would like to see content providers pay for use of the network, given the large amount of resources they use. This would be in clear violation of the �network neutrality� principle that had characterized the development of the wireline Internet. Our first goal in this paper is to propose and study possible ways of implementing such payments and of regulating their amount. We introduce a model that includes the internaut�s behavior, the utilities of the ISP and of the content providers, and the monetary flow that involves the internauts, the ISP and content provider, and in particular, the content provider�s revenues from advertisements. We consider various game models and study the resulting equilibrium; they are all combinations of a noncooperative game (in which the service and content providers determine how much they will charge the internauts) with a cooperative one - the content provider and the service provider bargain with each other over payments to one another. We include in our model a possible asymmetric bargaining power which is represented by a parameter (that varies between zero to one). We then extend our model to study the case of several content providers. We also provide a very brief study of the equilibria that arise when one of the content providers enters into an exclusive contract with the ISP.

Fuzzy Clustering Based Ad Recommendation for TV Programs

Advertisements(Ads) are the main revenue earner for Television (TV) broadcasters. As TV reaches a large audience, it acts as the best media for advertisements of products and services. With the emergence of digital TV, it is important for the broadcasters to provide an intelligent service according to the various dimensions like program features, ad features, viewers’ interest and sponsors’ preference. We present an automatic ad recommendation algorithm that selects a set of ads by considering these dimensions and semantically match them with programs. Features of the ad video are captured interms of annotations and they are grouped into number of predefined semantic categories by using a categorization technique. Fuzzy categorical data clustering technique is applied on categorized data for selecting better suited ads for a particular program. Since the same ad can be recommended for more than one program depending upon multiple parameters, fuzzy clustering acts as the best suited method for ad recommendation. The relative fuzzy score called “degree of membership” calculated for each ad indicates the membership of a particular ad to different program clusters. Subjective evaluation of the algorithm is done by 10 different people and rated with a high success score.

Truthful multi-armed bandit mechanisms for multi-slot sponsored search auctions

In pay-per-click sponsored search auctions which are currently extensively used by search engines, the auction for a keyword involves a certain number of advertisers (say k) competing for available slots (say m) to display their advertisements (ads for short). A sponsored search auction for a keyword is typically conducted for a number of rounds (say T). There are click probabilities mu(ij) associated with each agent slot pair (agent i and slot j). The search engine would like to maximize the social welfare of the advertisers, that is, the sum of values of the advertisers for the keyword. However, the search engine does not know the true values advertisers have for a click to their respective advertisements and also does not know the click probabilities. A key problem for the search engine therefore is to learn these click probabilities during the initial rounds of the auction and also to ensure that the auction mechanism is truthful. Mechanisms for addressing such learning and incentives issues have recently been introduced. These mechanisms, due to their connection to the multi-armed bandit problem, are aptly referred to as multi-armed bandit (MAB) mechanisms. When m = 1, exact characterizations for truthful MAB mechanisms are available in the literature. Recent work has focused on the more realistic but non-trivial general case when m > 1 and a few promising results have started appearing. In this article, we consider this general case when m > 1 and prove several interesting results. Our contributions include: (1) When, mu(ij)s are unconstrained, we prove that any truthful mechanism must satisfy strong pointwise monotonicity and show that the regret will be Theta T7) for such mechanisms. (2) When the clicks on the ads follow a certain click precedence property, we show that weak pointwise monotonicity is necessary for MAB mechanisms to be truthful. (3) If the search engine has a certain coarse pre-estimate of mu(ij) values and wishes to update them during the course of the T rounds, we show that weak pointwise monotonicity and type-I separatedness are necessary while weak pointwise monotonicity and type-II separatedness are sufficient conditions for the MAB mechanisms to be truthful. (4) If the click probabilities are separable into agent-specific and slot-specific terms, we provide a characterization of MAB mechanisms that are truthful in expectation.

CAVVA: Computational Affective Video-in-Video Advertising

Advertising is ubiquitous in the online community and more so in the ever-growing and popular online video delivery websites (e. g., YouTube). Video advertising is becoming increasingly popular on these websites. In addition to the existing pre-roll/post-roll advertising and contextual advertising, this paper proposes an in-stream video advertising strategy-Computational Affective Video-in-Video Advertising (CAVVA). Humans being emotional creatures are driven by emotions as well as rational thought. We believe that emotions play a major role in influencing the buying behavior of users and hence propose a video advertising strategy which takes into account the emotional impact of the videos as well as advertisements. Given a video and a set of advertisements, we identify candidate advertisement insertion points (step 1) and also identify the suitable advertisements (step 2) according to theories from marketing and consumer psychology. We formulate this two part problem as a single optimization function in a non-linear 0-1 integer programming framework and provide a genetic algorithm based solution. We evaluate CAVVA using a subjective user-study and eye-tracking experiment. Through these experiments, we demonstrate that CAVVA achieves a good balance between the following seemingly conflicting goals of (a) minimizing the user disturbance because of advertisement insertion while (b) enhancing the user engagement with the advertising content. We compare our method with existing advertising strategies and show that CAVVA can enhance the user's experience and also help increase the monetization potential of the advertising content.

Regulation of Off-Network Pricing in a Nonneutral Network

Representatives of several Internet service providers (ISPs) have expressed their wish to see a substantial change in the pricing policies of the Internet. In particular, they would like to see content providers (CPs) pay for use of the network, given the large amount of resources they use. This would be in clear violation of the ``network neutrality'' principle that had characterized the development of the wireline Internet. Our first goal in this article is to propose and study possible ways of implementing such payments and of regulating their amount. We introduce a model that includes the users' behavior, the utilities of the ISP and of the CPs, and, the monetary flow that involves the content users, the ISP and CP, and, in pUrticular, the CP's revenues from advertisements. We consider various game models and study the resulting equilibria; they are all combinations of a noncooperative game (in which the ISPs and CPs determine how much they will charge the users) with a ``cooperative'' one on how the CP and the ISP share the payments. We include in our model a possible asymmetric weighting parameter (that varies between zero to one). We also study equilibria that arise when one of the CPs colludes with the TSP. We also study two dynamic game models as well as the convergence of prices to the equilibrium values.

Accelerating Information Diffusion in Social Networks Under the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible Epidemic Model

Standard Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) epidemic models assume that a message spreads from the infected to the susceptible nodes due to only susceptible-infected epidemic contact. We modify the standard SIS epidemic model to include direct recruitment of susceptible individuals to the infected class at a constant rate (independent of epidemic contacts), to accelerate information spreading in a social network. Such recruitment can be carried out by placing advertisements in the media. We provide a closed form analytical solution for system evolution in the proposed model and use it to study campaigning in two different scenarios. In the first, the net cost function is a linear combination of the reward due to extent of information diffusion and the cost due to application of control. In the second, the campaign budget is fixed. Results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed system in accelerating and improving the extent of information diffusion. Our work is useful for devising effective strategies for product marketing and political/social-awareness/crowd-funding campaigns that target individuals in a social network.

Hacia una reconstrucción de las revistas del espectáculo : el caso de Radiolandia en los cuarenta y cincuenta

Resumen: El propósito del trabajo es el estudio de uno de los semanarios de teatro radio y cine más leídos de los años cuarenta y cincuenta: Radiolandia. Se trata de una publicación orientada a dar cuenta de la actualidad del campo artístico nacional tanto a través de notas sobre programas radiales, obras teatrales o películas específicas como a través de información sobre quienes el semanario denomina nuestros astros y estrellas. El abordaje de Radiolandia se desarrollará tomando tres ejes: uno descriptivo en el que se da cuenta de las características generales, tales como formato, precio, etc; un segundo vinculado al análisis de los avisos publicitarios y un tercero que se propone investigar el modo en el que son retratadas los actores, actrices y cancionistas como ídolos del espectáculo.

"I'm on it 24/7 at the moment" : A qualitative examination of multi-screen viewing behaviours among UK 10-11 year olds

Background: Screen-viewing has been associated with increased body mass, increased risk of metabolic syndrome and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents. There is a shortage of information about the nature of contemporary screen-viewing amongst children especially given the rapid advances in screen-viewing equipment technology and their widespread availability. Anecdotal evidence suggests that large numbers of children embrace the multi-functionality of current devices to engage in multiple forms of screen-viewing at the same time. In this paper we used qualitative methods to assess the nature and extent of multiple forms of screen-viewing in UK children. Methods: Focus groups were conducted with 10-11 year old children (n = 63) who were recruited from five primary schools in Bristol, UK. Topics included the types of screen-viewing in which the participants engaged; whether the participants ever engaged in more than one form of screen-viewing at any time and if so the nature of this multiple viewing; reasons for engaging in multi-screen-viewing; the room within the house where multi-screen-viewing took place and the reasons for selecting that room. All focus groups were transcribed verbatim, anonymised and thematically analysed. Results: Multi-screen viewing was a common behaviour. Although multi-screen viewing often involved watching TV, TV viewing was often the background behaviour with attention focussed towards a laptop, handheld device or smart-phone. There were three main reasons for engaging in multi-screen viewing: 1) tempering impatience that was associated with a programme loading; 2) multi-screen facilitated filtering out unwanted content such as advertisements; and 3) multi-screen viewing was perceived to be enjoyable. Multi-screen viewing occurred either in the child's bedroom or in the main living area of the home. There was considerable variability in the level and timing of viewing and this appeared to be a function of whether the participants attended after-school clubs. Conclusions: UK children regularly engage in two or more forms of screen-viewing at the same time. There are currently no means of assessing multi-screen viewing nor any interventions that specifically focus on reducing multi-screen viewing. To reduce children's overall screen-viewing we need to understand and then develop approaches to reduce multi-screen viewing among children.

La eficacia de la publicidad on-line en el contexto de los blogs

[ES] El objetivo del presente trabajo se ha centrado en medir la eficacia publicitaria de dos formatos de anuncios on-line, concretamente el robapáginas frente al contextual, así como los factores que sobre la base de la literatura revisada influyen en dicha eficacia publicitaria. Su contexto de aplicación son las páginas web de tipo blog o bitácora que, a pesar del auge que han experimentado en su utilización, no han recibido atención en el ámbito de la investigación publicitaria.

A leitura crítica de textos multimodais nas aulas de inglês: uma proposta de letramento com base na linguística sistêmico-funcional

Segundo os PCN, o ensino de Inglês deve contribuir para a formação de indivíduos questionadores e autônomos, que sejam capazes de fazer uso da linguagem como prática social. Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar uma proposta para desenvolver o letramento crítico através da leitura (KLEIMAN, 1995; SOARES, 2006), de forma a atender essa necessidade. Para tanto, indico, nesta dissertação, formas de abordar textos multimodais didaticamente, através da Análise Crítica do Discurso (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) usando os pressupostos teórico-metodológicos e as categorias analíticas oferecidas pela Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional. A relevância do estudo de textos com imagens na escola está na possibilidade de trazer para esse ambiente a discussão de como essas semioses expressam diferentes modos de acesso ao conhecimento. Além disso, apesar da existência de trabalhos dedicados à habilidade de leitura em Inglês (RAMOS, 2004; BAMBIRRA, 2007; VIAN JR., 2009) e, por outro lado, de pesquisas acerca da leitura de imagens e ensino (SARDELICH, 2006: OLIVEIRA, 2006), poucos são os trabalhos que contemplam a leitura crítica em língua estrangeira no que diz respeito à integração da linguagem verbal e visual para a produção de sentidos. Para investigar as escolhas linguísticas e imagéticas e sua relação, responsáveis pela mensagem a ser negociada com o leitor, foram estudados dezessete textos, separados em quatro grupos representando quatro gêneros textuais compostos pelo verbal e pelo visual: cinco artigos de revista, três resenhas, cinco tirinhas e quatro anúncios publicitários. Eles foram examinados separadamente através de algumas das seguintes categorias dentro das três metafunções: a ideacional, principalmente pela análise dos Processos (HALLIDAY & MATTHIESSEN, 2004; KRESS & VAN LEEUWEN, 2006) e da Representação dos Atores Sociais (VAN LEEUWEN, 1997 e 2008); a interpessoal, pela Valoração (MARTIN e WHITE, 2005) e as instâncias de Contato, Distância Social e Atitude no visual (KRESS & VAN LEEUWEN, 2006); a textual, somente na imagem, quanto à Saliência, ao Valor Informacional e à Moldura (KRESS & VAN LEEUWEN, 2006). A partir da descrição e discussão dos resultados das análises de cada gênero, proponho algumas atividades para exemplificar a aplicação da LSF em contexto escolar. A construção dos exercícios baseou-se principalmente no artigo de Ramos (2004) sobre a implementação de gêneros em sala de aula. Assim, o trabalho com os corpora se dividiu em três momentos, usando cada gênero de uma vez: 1) descrição do gênero em seu contexto situacional e considerações sobre o contexto cultural; 2) análise do corpus aplicando a LSF e 3) exemplificação de atividades a partir da análise. Os resultados indicam que verbal e visual tendem a se complementar nos gêneros estudados e os ferramentais teóricos utilizados se mostraram como um generoso ponto de partida para o desenvolvimento de atividades de leitura crítica

Persuasão e sedução: os caminhos do texto publicitário pela intertextualidade e interdiscursividade

A partir das teorias da Linguística Textual e da Análise do Discurso, este trabalho tem por objeto de estudo o processo de produção e recepção do anúncio publicitário impresso, investigando especificamente a intertextualidade e a interdiscursividade como forma de associação de informações que se encontram no repertório cultural da sociedade. Analisa, portanto, os efeitos de tais textos no interlocutor, que é seduzido pela mensagem que lhe é exposta, considerando que a linguagem publicitária está impregnada de discursos sócio-históricos e valores ideológicos que refletem o cotidiano das pessoas, sendo comum a aparição de anúncios que se destacam diante do leitor / consumidor por revelarem situações vividas por ele ou que se identifiquem com seus anseios mais íntimos. Com a análise de um corpus formado por 10 (dez) anúncios, retirados de revistas de grande circulação nacional, que mobilizam uma série de estratégias criativas para o seu processamento, assim como o conhecimento de mundo do leitor, buscou-se evidenciar de que modo o intertexto e o interdiscurso constroem o sentido das peças publicitárias, construindo textos persuasivos e sedutores. Com isso, o presente estudo se volta para uma reflexão da língua, podendo ser utilizado com finalidade didática, para que o olhar do aluno / leitor seja aguçado para as estratégias persuasivas propositadamente presentes nesse gênero textual. Assim, o sujeito-receptor de anúncios publicitários se instrumentaliza para a leitura, em sentido amplo, e se torna capaz de perceber todo o jogo arquitetado por uma linguagem híbrida

Publicidade emocional: a sensibilidade a serviço do consumo

Com um dos objetivos de conceituar e descrever as estratégias emocionais de persuasão publicitárias, levantei bibliografia da área e publicidades contidas no meio revista brasileiro. Depois, busquei analisar se os temas mais abordados e os meios de persuasão adotados são reflexos dos valores, crenças e comportamentos da cultura hipermoderna, segundo descrição dos autores escolhidos na fundamentação teórica. Fiz um levantamento dos anúncios que remetiam a um cuidado de si veiculados nas revistas Veja, Playboy e Marie Claire em 2005 e identifiquei dois tipos de estratégias emocionais. O que foi mais utilizado fomenta o hedonismo imaginativo e busca persuadir com diferentes apelos regressivos de gratificação do consumidor. A outra estratégia, também bem utilizada, com mensagens sutis, foi a repressiva. Neste caso, busca-se motivar a compra a partir da ilusão de inclusão social, com discursos que indicam como se deve ser, sentir e agir, em sua maior parte, também infantis. Outros objetivos desta pesquisa foram analisar os possíveis efeitos às subjetividades contemporâneas do conteúdo das mensagens dos anúncios divulgados nas revistas de maior circulação no Brasil. Por último, apresento algumas sugestões de criação publicitária em que se fomente o laço social, e o respeito à alteridade e ao ecossistema.

Livros, folhetos, jornais, calendários e folhinhas, tudo à venda na botica de Padre Tezinho: práticas sociais e práticas de leitura nos anúncios dos jornais do século XIX (1820-1831)

Este é o resultado de um trabalho desenvolvido que compõe a tese de doutorado cujo tema está focado nas práticas de leitura presentes na sociedade maranhense no século XIX, com recorte entre os anos de 1821 a 1831, data da circulação do primeiro jornal e da instalação da primeira tipografia no Maranhão, estendendo-se por todo o Primeiro Reinado quando a província começou a vivenciar os debates políticos e as transformações sociais, culturais e econômicas que lhe proporcionaram a construção de uma nova identidade. Trata- se de uma investigação histórica, tendo como fonte principal de pesquisa os jornais que circularam no Maranhão nesse período, e como sustentabilidade os reclames neles publicados que forneceram pistas necessárias para o entendimento das questões suscitadas sobre a cultura escrita, principalmente a presença de protocolos de leitura que, de forma geral, circundam ou estão vinculados às práticas de leitura e à cultura e de modo singular às pessoas, a fim de identificar as relações estabelecidas na tríade livro-leitor-leitura e, consequentemente, os desdobramentos sociais e pessoais, a partir do que era lido, produzido, veiculado ou comercializado entre os habitantes da província. Assim, houve também uma investigação de práticas sociais, incluindo ações, sujeitos e relações sociais, instrumentos, objetos, valores, tempo e lugar, não haurindo absolutamente o passado, mas garimpando referenciais que auxiliaram a entender o presente. O texto refaz um pouco a trajetória da imprensa no Maranhão, instituída com a finalidade de publicar o primeiro jornal maranhense O Conciliador do Maranhão, cujo caminho também é reconstituído assim como o dos demais jornais que circularam no período pesquisado, mostrando que eles serviram, não só para aclarar ideias, mas também para fazer brotar ideais liberalizantes. O capítulo-chave decorre das informações extraídas sobre os impressos produzidos pela imprensa local, os que estavam sendo comercializados pelo mercado maranhense, os que se encontravam no prelo local ou externo, os que se constituíam em leituras dos intelectuais e jornalistas, considerados principais construtores das práticas de leitura dos maranhenses oitocentistas. Um panorama das instituições mediadoras do livro e da leitura fecha o circuito percorrido, mostrando que as artes como a música, a pintura e o teatro serviram para delinear uma sociedade com peculiar formação crítica e que, as sociedades literárias, os gabinetes de leitura, as bibliotecas e as escolas públicas ou particulares, foram, de fato, verdadeiros baluartes da boa educação e da liberdade dos povos.