Advertising Media

Why Companies Advertise

• Advertising is the public promotion of something such as a product, service, business, or event, to attract or increase interest in it.

• Advertisers use humor, creativity, style, and originality to create an image for their products and services.

Types of Media

• A medium is a channel or system of communication.

• Media are the members of the mass media.

• Mass media are channels of communication, such as television, radio, and newspapers.

  • Print media include newspapers, magazines, signs, and billboards.

• Newspapers are the main advertising medium in the United States.

• Most magazines are national and appear every week (such as Time) or every month (such as Seventeen)

• Television advertising combines sounds, images, and motion.

• TV ads can be informative, entertaining, or creative

• An infomercial is a 30-minute commercial.

• Direct-mail advertising is the biggest advertising medium after television and newspapers.

  • Direct-mail advertising consists of ads sent by mail to people’s homes and businesses.

• Directory advertising appears mostly in phone books

• Radio ads can reach a wide audience.

  • However, they may not be as effective as TV or magazine ads because they cannot use images.

• The two main types of online ads are pop-up and banner ads.

  • Pop-up ads appear in a new browser window when you first log on to a Web site.

  • Banner ads are displayed across the top or bottom of the Web page.

• A webcast is a broadcast made on the Internet.

• Billboards provide the most common form of outdoor advertising

• Transit advertising usually consists of posters placed on the sides of buses, in subway stations, inside trains, and at airports.

Media Measurement and Rates

Media Planning

• Media planning is the process of selecting advertising media and deciding the time and space in which the ads should appear

• Many businesses develop advertising by hiring advertising agencies.

• An advertising agency is a business that specializes in developing ads and ad campaigns for its clients.

• An ad campaign is a series of ad messages that share a single idea and theme.

Media Measurement

• To understand media measurement, you need to become familiar with several key terms.

• First, the number of homes or people exposed to an ad is called the audience.

• A single exposure to an advertising message is called an impression.

• Frequency is the number of times an audience sees or hears an ad.

• Cost per thousand (CPM) is the media cost of exposing 1,000 readers or viewers to an advertising impression.

  • The “M” in CPM comes from the word mille, which is Latin for “thousand.”

• Knowing the potential audience, how frequently your ad will be seen, and its CPM can tell you if the rates charged by various media are right for your ad budget.

Media Rates

• To reach customers, advertising uses a set format that is defined in terms of time (a 60-second TV or radio ad) or space (a half-page newspaper ad).

• A media rate or advertising rate is the amount of money it costs to display or broadcast an ad.

• Ad rates for newspapers and magazines are based on circulation, or the number of people who buy them, and audience, the number of readers per issue.

  • The size of the ad also affects the cost.

• Magazine rates are based on circulation, the type of readership, and production techniques.

  • Premium position refers to ad placement.

    • Ads placed in prime positions, such as on the back cover or the inside of the first page, are more expensive to buy.

• The cost of TV and radio ads depends on the size of the audience, the reach of the station, and the time of day an ad is broadcast.

• Prime time is the time period when the network TV or radio audience is the largest.

  • TV audiences are usually largest between 7 P.M. and 11 P.M., when most viewers are at home.

• The cost of Internet advertising is based on the type, size, and format of ads.

  • Types include banner ads, rich-media enhanced banner ads, and pop-up ads.

• Paid search ads are Internet ads that online advertisers bid on for search engine queries.