Advertising Regulations in Media Convergence Environment by IT; Focusing on Broadcast and Internet Advertising

Objectives: This study reviewed the regulations of broadcast and Internet advertising in Korea to find the problems related to convergent opportunities or challenges and suggested the alternatives for the improvements. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Literature review was conducted focused on the researches of opportunities and challenges caused by convergent media and contents by the development of IT; specifically by the differences of the regulation system of broadcast and Internet advertising based on the secondary data. Findings: Statistics indicate that 85.1% of the total population, i.e., 42 million people, used Internet and 53.6% of the users used Internet shopping malls in 2015 in S. Korea. With the increase of Internet or mobile Internet users, the sales volume of Internet advertising have been increasing, on the other hand, broadcast advertising have been decreasing. And 43.2% of the sample size of 7,553 respondents cross-used Smartphone while watching TV. In this regard, the advertising regulation framework based on media-by-media or platform-by-platform of the past is not effective any more in current pervasive situations of advertising content convergence by IT, not even for consumer protection. The different regulatory body by each media such broadcast or Internet has different guidelines or standards to cause overlapping, unclear or unbalanced judgments on the same ads. Improvements/Applications: The past vertical or separated advertising regulation system by media needs to be replaced by the horizontal or harmonized paradigm to be open to one source multi-using and convergent ads.