The Increasing and Sophisticated Problem of Excessive Advertising
According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, 259 cases of inappropriate advertising targeting children's growth were discovered online in March, and measures were taken to block access to the relevant posts and request administrative sanctions. To prevent consumer harm, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety regularly checks for false and excessive advertising on online social media platforms and shopping malls.
In this post, we would like to introduce a case where a food manufacturing and distribution company, Company P, utilizes web crawling to detect and manage online false and excessive advertising related to their products.
Efficiency in Managing Excessive Advertising Increased Several Dozen Times, and Passed the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety Audit Smoothly!
Company P's flagship product, a multivitamin, gained popularity through word-of-mouth on Naver blogs, which also led to group purchases. However, from Company P's perspective, they were concerned about potential consumer harm and fines from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety due to advertisements they did not initiate. Therefore, they continuously monitored the blogs to mitigate these risks.
However, manually monitoring various product categories and thousands of posts proved to be time-consuming for employees. Additionally, they were unable to detect many posts, leading to inefficient operations.
To address this issue, Company P sought out a hash scraper and now efficiently monitors blogs for false and excessive advertising using web crawling services. They have experienced significant improvements compared to manual monitoring.
1. Expanded Monitoring Scope
They were able to monitor over dozens of times more blog posts than when done manually.
2. Improved Time Efficiency
The time spent on monitoring was reduced to nearly 1/10. The team size was reduced from 2-3 members to 1, who now only needs to review reports.
3. Effective Management
Requests for modifications or deletions on detected posts went smoothly without any issues during the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety audit, surprising the audit personnel.
Effective Methods for Monitoring False and Excessive Advertising
So, what constitutes false and excessive advertising, and how did Company P utilize web crawling?
Violations Related to False and Excessive Advertising
Some typical violations related to false and excessive advertising include:
- Advertising that confuses general food with health functional food (e.g., height-increasing nutritional supplements, health functional food for height growth)
- False or exaggerated advertising claims (e.g., supports natural bone growth and strength)
- Advertising that confuses with pharmaceutical products (e.g., height-increasing medicine)
- Deceptive advertising (e.g., my sibling grew taller after consuming this!!)
- Advertising claims regarding the prevention and treatment of diseases (e.g., #osteoporosisprevention)
- Advertisements that violate regulations
Collecting Blog Posts and Identifying Violations through Web Crawling
To detect these violations, they conducted web crawling based on keyword searches on Naver blogs.
Process:
1. Web Crawling
All blogs that match the combination of product names and violation keywords (e.g., A Multivitamin Cancer Prevention) on Naver blogs are collected.
Web crawling allows for quick and accurate collection of posts using numerous keyword combinations.
2. Checking Violation Keywords
Posts containing other violation keywords are filtered out from the collected posts.
Violation keywords are selected based on guidelines provided by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, such as "effect," "efficacy," and "cancer prevention."
3. Writing Reports
Detected posts, blogs, violation keywords, etc., are summarized and compiled for statistical analysis. Additionally, reports comparing statistics from previous months are prepared.
These reports are used to continuously track trends in excessive advertising, monitor excessive advertising blogs, and detect new violation keywords.
All three steps of the process are automated, enabling Company P to effectively manage false and excessive advertising much more efficiently than manual operations.
Utilizing Web Crawling for Detecting Online False and Excessive Advertising
As seen in the examples above, false and exaggerated advertising is a challenge that online marketing must address for consumer protection. In this process, web crawling is an effective and efficient method to tackle this issue. It is expected that more companies will lead the way in building a trustworthy advertising ecosystem and enhancing online advertising health using such technologies.
Utilizing a Naver Blog Post Crawler for Detecting Excessive Advertising
STEP 1. Sign up for Hash Scraper and access the Naver Blog post analysis crawler.
STEP 2. Press the settings button and input search criteria.
STEP 3. Collect data after setting up and download it in Excel format upon completion.
Curious about the various functions of the dashboard?
The Hash Scraper dashboard provides web crawling bots that can collect data from various websites, including Naver blogs, SNS, shopping malls, blogs/cafes, communities, news, maps, and more.
If you need specific web crawlers, let Hash Scraper know, and they will assist you in collecting the data you require quickly and easily!
