What are the ethics involved in the use of emerging media in integrated marketing communications?

Emerging media through digital capabilities has expanded the integrated marketing communications (IMC) opportunities but it has also brought with it new ethical issues. Many feel that marketing through the use of digital media is intrusive. While the opportunity to market through digital media avenues is exciting for IMC professionals, we must be very careful not to cross the line and always remain ethical in our practices. Currently, the government only minimally regulates Internet marketing and therefore, until there are regulations put in place by the government, unfortunately, each individual is acting on his own code of ethics.

One area of great concern is consumer privacy. Recently many privacy and consumer groups have come together to recommend a "Do Not Track List" and other policy solutions to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in order to offer consumers more control over online behavioral tracking.

Another area of concern is how intrusive can we be as IMC professionals without crossing the ethical line? For example, the youth market is more Internet-savvy than any other demographic; therefore they are a prime target audience of emerging media. Emerging media allows us to reach such prime targets while playing video games, surfing on the Web, by cell phone, etc.

Even journalists have to recheck their ethical standings as they contribute to online accessible articles. As these new forms of storytelling emerge, new technologies move to newsroom desktops and new efficiencies promise to change the dynamics between information providers and consumers, the line between news and opinion can easily be blurred, imperiling the credibility of the practitioners and their organizations. A team of online journalists from across the country came together to discuss the issues surrounding their work, and they created a set of guidelines for maintaining ethical journalism on the Web.