Advertising

Most advertising spending is directed toward the promotion of a specific good, service or idea, what we have collectively labeled as an organization’s product. In most cases the goal of product advertising is to clearly promote a specific product to a targeted audience. Marketers can accomplish this in several ways from a low-key approach that simply provides basic information about a product (informative advertising) to blatant appeals that try to convince customers to purchase a product (persuasive advertising) that may include direct comparisons between the marketer’s product and its competitor’s offerings (comparative advertising).However, sometimes marketers intentionally produce product advertising where the target audience cannot readily see a connection to a specific product. Marketers of new products may follow this "teaser" approach in advance of a new product introduction to prepare the market for the product. For instance, one week before the launch of a new product a marketer may air a television advertisement proclaiming "After next week the world will never be the same" but do so without any mention of a product or even the company behind the ad. The goal is to create curiosity in the market and interest when the product is launched.

Image advertising is undertaken primarily to enhance an organization’s perceived importance to a target market. Image advertising does not focus on specific products as much as it presents what an organization has to offer. In these types of ads, if products are mentioned it is within the context of "what we do" rather than a message touting the benefits of a specific product. Image advertising is often used in situations where an organization needs to educate the targeted audience on some issue. For instance, image advertising may be used in situations where a merger has occurred between two companies and the newly formed company has taken on a new name, or if a company has received recent negative publicity and the company wants to let the market know that they are about much more than this one issue.

Organizations also use advertising to send a message intended to influence a targeted audience. In most cases there is an underlying benefit sought by an organization when they engage in advocacy advertising. For instance, an organization may take a stand on a political issue which they feel could negatively impact the organization and will target advertisements to voice their position on the issue.

In some countries, not-for-profit organizations are permitted to run advertisements through certain media outlets free-of-charge if the message contained in the ad concerns an issue viewed as for the "greater good" of society. For instance, ads directed at social causes, such as teen-age smoking, illegal drug use and mental illness, may run on television, radio and other media without cost to organizations sponsoring the advertisement.

Spending on advertising is huge. One often quoted statistic by market research firm ZenithOptimedia estimates that worldwide spending on advertising exceeds (US) $400 billion. This level of spending supports thousands of companies and millions of jobs. In fact, in many countries most media outlets, such as television, radio and newspapers, would not be in business without revenue generated through the sale of advertising. While worldwide advertising is an important contributor to economic growth, individual marketing organizations differ on the role advertising plays. For some organizations little advertising may be done, instead promotional money is spent on other promotion options such a personal selling through a sales team. For some smaller companies advertising may consist of occasional advertisement and on a very small scale, such as placing small ads in the classified section of a local newspaper.But most organizations, large and small, that rely on marketing to create customer interest are engaged in consistent use of advertising to help meet marketing objectives. This includes regularly developing advertising campaigns, which involve a series of decisions for planning, creating, delivering and evaluating an advertising effort

Refers to a growing trend for using computer technology to deliver media programming and information.

This is done from using the digital data that a consumer uses as well as the data they send out. This is digital information and it's used for market research as well as future marketing efforts.

 Television recording devices offer marketers tremendous insight into viewers’ habits and behavior. Yet from the consumer side, the DVR is changing how people view television programs by allowing them to watch programming at a time that is most convenient for them. Viewer convenience is not the only advantage of the DVR. The other main reason consumers are attracted to the DVR is their ability to quickly skip over commercials. Of course this presents major issues for advertisers who are paying for advertisements. As more DVR devices with ad skipping or even ad blocking features are adopted by mainstream consumers the advertiser’s concern with whether they are getting the best value for the advertising money becomes a bigger issue. Advertisers who feel frustrated with television ad-skipping may opt to invest their promotional funds in other media outlets where consumers are more likely to be exposed to an advertisement.

There is a major cultural shift occurring in how people use media for entertainment, news and information. Many traditional media outlets, such as newspapers and major commercial television networks, are seeing their customer base eroded by the emergence of new media outlets. The Internet has become the major driver of this change. In particular, a number of important applications tied to the Internet are creating new media outlets and drawing the attention of many, mostly younger, consumers.

Possibly the most significant example of how media usage is changing can be seen with the rapid expansion of social media. Social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, not only offer a venue for social exchange but these are also developing into locations where news and information is obtained.

In large part due to the popularity of YouTube, what now qualifies as video media has changed. Now anyone can produce videos and post for the world to see. The result is that advertising choices for video production is no longer limited to television programs as marketers can present their ads as part of online video.

While accessing video content over the Internet through computers linked to high-speed data networks is common, the streaming of video over wireless networks to small, handheld devices, including smartphones, is still in its infancy. Many television networks are now experimenting with making its programming available in formats suitable for small screen viewing. This includes offering marketers advertising opportunities. With the number of small screen devices continuing to grow rapidly, it is likely this format for advertising is poised for tremendous growth over a short time frame.

Smartphone and tablet computer applications or “apps” are proving to offer rich new ground for advertisers. While most marketers are limiting their ads on apps to text and static image advertising, improvements in video performance and data speeds are opening the door for “in app” video ads.

This is an Internet information distribution technology that is popular with news websites. With RSS feeds, new information posted on a website can be delivered instantly to anyone who has signed up for delivery. The information sent to feed subscribers can include inserted ads.

In addition to offering RSS feeds, many news websites offer free downloadable audio and video files that can be experienced on computers, smartphones and iPod devices. While, at one time, this form of content delivery was widely used, many users are now accessing the information directly from the website rather than downloading files (e.g., watch news programming on mobile device). As this trend continues, the effectiveness of inserting ads in podcasts is likely to decline.

While gaming systems have been around for some time, gaming accessible over information networks is still evolving. As Internet and mobile network connections increase in speed, gamers are expected to shift away from games loaded on their local computer and, instead, access games online. This shift is opening new territory for advertisers by enabling marketers to insert special content, including product advertising, within game play.

Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketer’s target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising.Advertising also has a history of being considered a one-way form of marketing communication where the message receiver (i.e., target market) is not in position to immediately respond to the message (e.g., seek more information). This too is changing. For example, in the next few years technologies will be readily available to enable a television viewer to click a button to request more details on a product seen on their favorite TV program. In fact, it is expected that over the next 10-20 years advertising will move away from a one-way communication model and become one that is highly interactive.Another characteristic that may change as advertising evolves is the view that advertising does not stimulate immediate demand for the product advertised. That is, customers cannot quickly purchase a product they see advertised. But as more media outlets allow customers to interact with the messages being delivered the ability of advertising to quickly stimulate demand will improve.