What is the purpose of advertising
What is the purpose of advertising
What Is Advertisement? – Examples, Objectives, & Importance
Advertisements come in various shapes, sizes, and forms, be it a thirty-second spot on TV, a radio jingle, a newspaper promotion, or a highly personalised promotion on a social media platform.
But how do you define an advertisement, what is its purpose, and why is it important?
What Is An Advertisement?
An advertisement is a paid promotional tool backed by an identified sponsor to call public attention to an offering or a brand.
This definition of advertisement can be divided into three parts
In simple terms, an advertisement is a paid communication message intended to inform people about something or influence them to buy, try, or do something.
Types Of Advertisements
Advertisements can be categorised into five different types based on what advertising medium a brand uses to communicate its message.
Print Advertisements
Print advertisement is a mass advertisement strategy that uses hard copy printed mediums like newspapers, magazines, brochures, flyers, etc., to communicate the advertisement message to the customers.
It is one of the oldest advertisement types that majorly target and cater to a literate audience.
Broadcast Advertisements
Broadcast advertisements are mass marketing tools that use broadcast mediums like TV and radio to spread the advertising message to a wider audience.
These ads rely more on visual communication and hence can target everyone with access to such mediums irrespective of their literacy level.
Outdoor Advertisements
Outdoor advertisements or out-of-home advertisements are ads that reach customers out of their homes. They use mediums like billboards, buses, taxis, or street elements.
Outdoor advertisements can be digital or traditional, but all of them are targeted to a geographically oriented target audience.
Digital Advertisements
Digital advertisements are technology-powered advertisements that use online or digital paid channels to communicate the marketing message to the target audience. Such ads appear online or on digital channels like websites, search engines, social media platforms, mobile apps, and other digital channels.
Product Or Brand Integration
It involves brand or product placement in entertainment media like TV shows, OTT series, YouTube videos, etc., where the brand is interwoven within the script without looking salesy.
Instead of being interruptive advertisements, these ads form the script or a part of the entertainment media and communicate the message in a better-scripted manner.
What Is The Purpose Of Advertisement?
Even though advertisements come in various shapes, sizes, and types, they have just one purpose: communicating the brand or marketing message to the target audience by paying for it.
What Are The Objectives Of Advertisements?
Advertisements can be released with numerous objectives depending upon the type of business, marketing campaign, campaign requirements, etc. However, these objectives can be categorised into three prominent objectives –
Besides these three main objectives, advertisements also focus on:
Importance Of Advertisement
Advertisements are important for both the business and the customers.
For The customers
For The businesses
Characteristics Of An Advertisement
No matter what medium a business use to advertise its offerings, all advertisements come with a similar set of characteristics. These are:
Advantages Of Advertisements
Disadvantages Of Advertisements
Advertisements Examples
An average human sees 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements in a day. From TVs to mobile phones to even taxis, advertisements are everywhere. Here are some examples of notable advertisements in the world.
TV Ads Example
TV ads are known to be visually compelling messages with
Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” advertisement is a great ad that has all such characteristics.
Radio Ads Example
Radio ads are considered great when they are
A great example of such a well-developed radio ad is The Volkswagen Mystery that featured Stephen Hawking.
Print Ads Example
A well-developed print ad has the following elements:
A great example of such a print advertisement is Ecovia: Stop the Violence.
Outdoor Ads Example
An apt outdoor ad communicates the message quickly, memorably, and repeatedly. A good example of such an outdoor ad is Belt Up.
Digital Ads Example
Digital ads are usual ads but on digital mediums. These ads are promotional, persuasive, targeted, creative, consistent, and personalised. Fitbit Stories: “#MyReasonIs”
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A startup consultant, digital marketer, traveller, and philomath. Aashish has worked with over 20 startups and successfully helped them ideate, raise money, and succeed. When not working, he can be found hiking, camping, and stargazing.
What is the purpose of advertising
A 1900 advertisement for Pears soap.
Advertising is any paid form of communication from an identified sponsor or source that draws attention to ideas, goods, services or the sponsor itself. Most advertising is directed toward groups rather than individuals, and advertising is usually delivered through media such as television, radio, newspapers and, increasingly, the Internet. Ads are often measured in impressions (the number of times a consumer is exposed to an advertisement).
Advertising is a very old form of promotion with roots that go back even to ancient times. In recent decades, the practices of advertising have changed enormously as new technology and media have allowed consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues. From the invention of the remote control, which allows people to ignore advertising on TV without leaving the couch, to recording devices that let people watch TV programs but skip the ads, conventional advertising is on the wane. Across the board, television viewership has fragmented, and ratings have fallen.
Print media are also in decline, with fewer people subscribing to newspapers and other print media and more people favoring digital sources for news and entertainment. Newspaper advertising revenue has declined steadily since 2000. [1] Advertising revenue in television is also soft, and it is split across a growing number of broadcast and cable networks. Clearly companies need to move beyond traditional advertising channels to reach consumers. Digital media outlets have happily stepped in to fill this gap. Despite this changing landscape, for many companies advertising remains at the forefront of how they deliver the proper message to customers and prospective customers.
The Purpose of Advertising
Advertising has three primary objectives: to inform, to persuade, and to remind.
Left: Informative Advertising Right: Persuasive Advertising
When people think of advertising, often product-focused advertisements are top of mind—i.e., ads that promote an organization’s goods or services. Institutional advertising goes beyond products to promote organizations, issues, places, events, and political figures. Public service announcements (PSAs) are a category of institutional advertising focused on social-welfare issues such as drunk driving, drug use, and practicing a healthy lifestyle. Usually PSAs are sponsored by nonprofit organizations and government agencies with a vested interest in the causes they promote.
Public Service Announcement (PSA)
Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising
As a method of marketing communication, advertising has both advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, advertising creates a sense of credibility or legitimacy when an organization invests in presenting itself and its products in a public forum. Ads can convey a sense of quality and permanence, the idea that a company isn’t some fly-by-night venture. Advertising allows marketers to repeat a message at intervals selected strategically. Repetition makes it more likely that the target audience will see and recall a message, which improves awareness-building results. Advertising can generate drama and human interest by featuring people and situations that are exciting or engaging. It can introduce emotions, images, and symbols that stimulate desire, and it can show how a product or brand compares favorably to competitors. Finally, advertising is an excellent vehicle for brand building, as it can create rational and emotional connections with a company or offering that translate into goodwill. As advertising becomes more sophisticated with digital media, it is a powerful tool for tracking consumer behaviors, interests, and preferences, allowing advertisers to better tailor content and offers to individual consumers. Through the power of digital media, memorable or entertaining advertising can be shared between friends and go viral—and viewer impressions skyrocket.
The primary disadvantage of advertising is cost. Marketers question whether this communication method is really cost-effective at reaching large groups. Of course, costs vary depending on the medium, with television ads being very expensive to produce and place. In contrast, print and digital ads tend to be much less expensive. Along with cost is the question of how many people an advertisement actually reaches. Ads are easily tuned out in today’s crowded media marketplace. Even ads that initially grab attention can grow stale over time. While digital ads are clickable and interactive, traditional advertising media are not. In the bricks-and-mortar world, it is difficult for marketers to measure the success of advertising and link it directly to changes in consumer perceptions or behavior. Because advertising is a one-way medium, there is usually little direct opportunity for consumer feedback and interaction, particularly from consumers who often feel overwhelmed by competing market messages.
Developing Effective Ads: The Creative Strategy
Effective advertising starts with the same foundational components as any other IMC campaign: identifying the target audience and the objectives for the campaign. When advertising is part of a broader IMC effort, it is important to consider the strategic role advertising will play relative to other marketing communication tools. With clarity around the target audience, campaign strategy, and budget, the next step is to develop the creative strategy for developing compelling advertising. The creative strategy has two primary components: the message and the appeal.
The message comes from the messaging framework discussed earlier in this module: what message elements should the advertising convey to consumers? What should the key message be? What is the call to action? How should the brand promise be manifested in the ad? How will it position and differentiate the offering? With advertising, it’s important to remember that the ad can communicate the message not only with words but also potentially with images, sound, tone, and style.
Effective wordless advertisement
Marketers also need to consider existing public perceptions and other advertising and messages the company has placed in the market. Has the prior marketing activity resonated well with target audiences? Should the next round of advertising reinforce what went before, or is it time for a fresh new message, look, or tone?
Along with message, the creative strategy also identifies the appeal, or how the advertising will attract attention and influence a person’s perceptions or behavior. Advertising appeals can take many forms, but they tend to fall into one of two categories: informational appeal and emotional appeal.
The informational appeal offers facts and information to help the target audience make a purchasing decision. It tries to generate attention using rational arguments and evidence to convince consumers to select a product, service, or brand. For example:
The following Black+Decker commercial relies on an informational appeal to promote its product:
The emotional appeal targets consumers’ emotional wants and needs rather than rational logic and facts. It plays on conscious or subconscious desires, beliefs, fears, and insecurities to persuade consumers and influence their behavior. The emotional appeal is linked to the features and benefits provided by the product, but it creates a connection with consumers at an emotional level rather than a rational level. Most marketers agree that emotional appeals are more powerful and differentiating than informational appeals. However, they must be executed well to seem authentic and credible to the the target audience. A poorly executed emotional appeal can come across as trite or manipulative. Examples of emotional appeals include:
The following Heinz Ketchup commercial offers a humorous example of an ad based entirely on an emotional appeal:
Developing the Media Plan
The media plan is a document that outlines the strategy and approach for an advertising campaign, or for the advertising component in an IMC campaign. The media plan is developed simultaneously with the creative strategy. A standard media plan consists of four stages: (a) stating media objectives; (b) evaluating media; (c) selecting and implementing media choices; and (d) determining the media budget.
Media objectives are normally started in terms of three dimensions:
The process of evaluating media involves considering each type of advertising available to a marketer, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses associated with each medium. The table below outlines key strengths and weaknesses of major types of advertising media. Television advertising is a powerful and highly visible medium, but it is expensive to produce and buy air time. Radio is quite flexible and inexpensive, but listenership is lower and it typically delivers fewer impressions and a less-targeted audience. Most newspapers and magazines have passed their advertising heydays and today struggle against declining subscriptions and readership. Yet they can be an excellent and cost-effective investment for reaching some audiences. Display ads offer a lot of flexibility and creative options, from wrapping busses in advertising to creating massive and elaborate 3-D billboards. Yet their reach is limited to their immediate geography. Online advertising such as banner ads, search engine ads, paid listings, pay-per-click links and similar techniques offers a wide selection of opportunities for marketers to attract and engage with target audiences online. Yet the internet is a very crowded place, and it is difficult to for any individual company to stand out in the crowd.
Table: Advertising Media Strengths and Weaknesses
| Advertising Media Type | Strengths | Weaknesses |
| Television | · Strong emotional impact · Mass coverage/small cost per impression · Entertaining/prestigious | · High costs · High clutter (too many ads) · Schedule inflexibility |
| Radio | · Immediacy · Low cost per impression · Highly flexible | · Limited national coverage · Less easily perceived during drive time · Fleeting message |
| Newspapers | · Flexibility (size, timing, etc.) · Offer merchandising services · Reader involvement | · Declining readership · Clutter |
| Magazines | · Highly segmented audiences · Reproduction quality | · Inflexible · Waste circulation |
| Display Ads: Billboards, Posters, Flyers, etc. | · Mass coverage/small cost per impression · Creative flexibility | · High clutter · Short-lived impression |
| Online Ads (including mobile): Banner ads, search ads, paid listings, pay-per-click links, etc. | · Highly segmented audiences · Low cost per impression · Immediacy; link to interests, behavior · Click-thru and code allow further interaction · Timing flexibility | · High clutter · Somewhat less flexibility in size, format |
The evaluation process requires research to to assess options for reaching their target audience with each medium, and how well a particular message fits the audience in that medium. Many advertisers rely heavily on the research findings provided by the medium, by their own experience, and by subjective appraisal to determine the best media for a given campaign.
To illustrate, if a company is targeting young-to-middle-aged professional women to sell beauty products, the person or team responsible for the media plan should evaluate what options each type of media offers for reaching this audience. How reliably can television, radio, newspapers or magazines deliver this audience? Media organizations maintain carefully-researched information about the size, demographics and other characteristics of their viewership or readership. Cable and broadcast TV networks know which shows are hits with this target demographic and therefore which advertising spots to sell to a company targeting professional women. Likewise newspapers know which sections attract the eyeballs of female audiences, and magazines publishers understand very well the market niches their publications fit. Online advertising becomes a particularly powerful tool for targeted advertising because of the information it captures and tracks about site visitors: who views and clicks on ads, where they visit and what they search for. Not only does digital advertising provide the opportunity to advertise on sites that cater to a target audience of professional women, but it can identify which of these women are searching for beauty products, and it can help a company target these individuals more intensely and provide opportunities for follow-up interaction.
The following video further explains how digital advertising targets and tracks individuals based on their expressed interests and behaviors.
You can read a transcript of the video here.
Selection and Implementation
The media planner must make decisions about the media mix and timing, both of which are restricted by the available budget. The media-mix decision involves choosing the best combination of advertising media to achieve the goals of the campaign. This is a difficult task, and it usually requires evaluating each medium quantitatively and qualitatively to select a mix that optimizes reach and budget.
Unfortunately, there are few valid rules of thumb to guide this process, in part because it is difficult to compare audiences across different types of advertising media. For example, Nielsen ratings measure audiences based on TV viewer reports of the programs watched, while outdoor (billboard) audience-exposure estimates are based on counts of the number of automobiles that pass particular outdoor poster locations. The “timing of media” refers to the actual placement of advertisements during the time periods that are most appropriate, given the selected media objectives. It includes not only the scheduling of advertisements, but also the size and position of the advertisement.
There are three common patterns for advertising scheduling:
Budget
When considering advertising as a marketing communication method, companies need to balance the cost of advertising–both of producing the advertising pieces and buying placement—against the total budget for the IMC program. The selection and scheduling of media have a huge impact on budget: advertising that targets a mass audience is generally more expensive than advertising that targets a local or niche audience. It is important for marketers to consider the contribution advertising will make to the whole. Although advertising is generally one of the more expensive parts of the promotion mix, it may be a worthwhile investment if it contributes substantially to the reach and effectiveness of the whole program. Alternatively, some marketers spend very little on advertising because they find other methods are more productive and cost-effective for reaching their target segments.
Anatomy of an Advertisement
Advertisements use several common elements to deliver the message. The visual is the picture, image, or situation portrayed in the advertisement. The visual also considers the emotions, style, or look-and-feel to be conveyed: should the ad appear tender, businesslike, fresh, or supercool? All of these considerations can be conveyed by the visual, without using any words.
The headline is generally what the viewer reads first—i.e., the words in the largest typeface. The headline serves as a hook for the appeal: it should grab attention, pique interest, and cause the viewer to keep reading or paying attention. In a radio or television ad, the headline equivalent might be the voice-over of a narrator delivering the primary message, or it might be a visual headline, similar to a print ad.
In print ads, a subhead is a smaller headline that continues the idea introduced in the headline or provides more information. It usually appears below the headline and in a smaller typeface. The body copy provides supporting information. Generally it appears in a standard, readable font. The call to action may be part of the body copy, or it may appear elsewhere in a larger typeface or color treatment to draw attention to itself.
A variety of brand elements may also appear in an advertisement. These include the name of the advertiser or brand being advertised, the logo, a tagline, hashtag, Web site link, or other standard “branded” elements that convey brand identity. These elements are an important way of establishing continuity with other marketing communications used in the IMC campaign or developed by the company. For example, print ads for an IMC campaign might contain a campaign-specific tagline that also appears in television ads, Website content, and social media posts associated with the campaign.
Hoover advertisement with ad elements shown.
Ad Testing and Measurement
When organizations are poised to make a large investment in any type of advertising, it is wise to conduct marketing research to test the advertisements with target audiences before spending lots of money on ads and messages that may not hit the mark. Ad testing may preview messages and preliminary ad concepts with members of a target segment to see which ones resonate best and get insight about how to fine-tune messages or other aspects of the ad to make them more effective. Organizations may conduct additional testing with near-final advertising pieces to do more fine-tuning of the messages and visuals before going public.
To gauge the impact of advertising, organizations may conduct pre-tests and post-tests of their target audience to measure whether advertising has its intended effect. A pre-test assesses consumer attitudes, perceptions, and behavior before the advertising campaign. A post-test measures the same things afterward to determine how the ads have influenced the target audience, if at all.
Companies may also measure sales before, during, and after advertising campaigns run in the geographies or targets where the advertising appeared. This provides information about the return on investment for the campaign, which is how much the advertising increased sales relative to how much money it cost to execute. Ideally advertising generates more revenue and, ultimately profits, than it costs to mount the advertising campaign.
What are the Main Purposes of Advertising?
Advertising usually constitutes a part of the marketing efforts of an organisation. Advertising is undertaken by organisations in order to attract the attention of people towards products and services.
Thus, the basic aim of advertising is to create awareness in the minds of people, about the availability of products and services and influence them to buy the same.
The ultimate aim is to enhance the sales of the organisation. Therefore, advertising complements and supplements the company’s selling efforts. The main purposes of advertising are as follows:
1. Communicates information:
One of the most important functions of advertising is to convey or communicate the information to others. In the modern day world, where science and technology contributes to new innovations and inventions, every now and then new goods and improvisation of the existing goods and services are entering into the market. If their use or knowledge is restricted to a limited number of people, social advancements cannot take place.
Image Source: alabshar.com
Consumers are, therefore, provided the information about new products and services which enter the market, through advertising. Besides, the demand for existing products and services has to be maintained as well as enhanced with the help of advertising. The ultimate purpose is to enhance sales either by creating or increasing demand for goods and services.
2. Creates ground for personal selling:
Since the main purpose of advertising is to create and sustain demand for products or services and expand the market, the prospective buyers automatically become interested to buy such products and services. In this way, advertising supports the efforts of the sales force of an organisation and creates ground for the salesmen to approach the prospective buyers.
3. Educates people:
Advertising serves another important purpose of educating people about products and services. As consumers are not aware of the use of several products and services, advertisements provide adequate knowledge to the people at large about the usage and utility of several products and services.
For example, as consumers, we are not aware of the composition of baby food, health drink, etc. which are made known to us by advertisements only. In fact, advertisement provides us knowledge of various aspects of products and services which really benefits and educates consumers in making wise purchase decisions.
4. Creates and extends demand:
By arousing interest of the people and attracting their attention, advertising seeks to create and sustain demand for a product or service and expand the market for the same. Thus, advertising is a two-edged weapon. It creates demand for products and services and also helps to maintain and extend the demand. As a matter of fact, there are innumerable wants which lie dormant within us. Advertising and publicity try to bring out the hidden want within us and create demand for goods and services. Thus, new demand within the population is created and consumers are encouraged to buy more.
5. Creates image for the product or service:
Another important purpose of advertising is to create an image both for the product as well as for the organisation. This is done by emphasising the distinctive features of the products or services through advertisements. Similarly, the reputation and goodwill of the organisation can also be emphasised in advertisements.
Further, some advertisers also communicate information about new discoveries, new ideas and new products and thereby create good image of their firms. They also highlight their high points like low prices, special discounts, customer services, etc. which contribute to build a favourable image of the organisation.
6. Builds goodwill:
Advertising serves the purpose of promoting goodwill for the organisation. Many advertisements aim at impressing the consumers that the firm is patriotic, progressive, imaginative and very much concerned with quality. This creates goodwill in the minds of the general public about the firm. This goes a long way in creating a favourable impression about the organisation on the prospective buyers.
7. Obtain dealer support:
Dealers dealing with products and services need constant support from the manufacturer in the form of advertising. In other words, advertisements make products and services quite familiar with the prospective buyers.
As a consequence, products and services are pre-sold through advertising. Such products and services become quite familiar with the consumers. Dealers also prefer stocking those products and services which are well-advertised and having a constant demand in the market.
8. Counters competition
In the present day competitive marketing environment, a firm cannot escape the responsibility of spending on advertising. To counter the competitor’s advertisement campaign, every firm has to undertake advertisement of its own. Therefore, competitive forces compel firms to spend on advertising.
advertising
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Advertising is the techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice to persuade the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised. Besides promoting goods for sale, advertising methods are used to encourage people to drive safely, support various charities, vote for political candidates, etc.
The first step toward modern advertising came with the development of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century, weekly newspapers in London began to carry advertisements, and by the 18th century, such advertising was flourishing.
Traditional mediums used for advertising are newspapers, magazines, television and radio programs, direct mail, billboards, posters, transit advertising, and miscellaneous media. In the 21st century advertisers have increasingly used digital technology to call greater attention to products and causes.
Read a brief summary of this topic
advertising, the techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised. Most advertising involves promoting a good that is for sale, but similar methods are used to encourage people to drive safely, to support various charities, or to vote for political candidates, among many other examples. In many countries advertising is the most important source of income for the media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, or television stations) through which it is conducted. In the noncommunist world advertising has become a large and important service industry.
In the ancient and medieval world such advertising as existed was conducted by word of mouth. The first step toward modern advertising came with the development of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century weekly newspapers in London began to carry advertisements, and by the 18th century such advertising was flourishing.
The great expansion of business in the 19th century was accompanied by the growth of an advertising industry; it was that century, primarily in the United States, that saw the establishment of advertising agencies. The first agencies were, in essence, brokers for space in newspapers. But by the early 20th century agencies became involved in producing the advertising message itself, including copy and artwork, and by the 1920s agencies had come into being that could plan and execute complete advertising campaigns, from initial research to copy preparation to placement in various media.
Advertising developed in a variety of media. Perhaps the most basic was the newspaper, offering advertisers large circulations, a readership located close to the advertiser’s place of business, and the opportunity to alter their advertisements on a frequent and regular basis. Magazines, the other chief print medium, may be of general interest or they may be aimed at specific audiences (such as people interested in outdoor sports or computers or literature) and offer the manufacturers of products of particular interest to such people the chance to make contact with their most likely customers. Many national magazines publish regional editions, permitting a more selective targeting of advertisements. In Western industrial nations television and radio became the most pervasive media. Although in some countries radio and television are state-run and accept no advertising, in others advertisers are able to buy short “spots” of time, usually a minute or less in duration. Advertising spots are broadcast between or during regular programs, at moments sometimes specified by the advertiser and sometimes left up to the broadcaster. For advertisers the most important facts about a given television or radio program are the size and composition of its audience. The size of the audience determines the amount of money the broadcaster can charge an advertiser, and the composition of the audience determines the advertiser’s choice as to when a certain message, directed at a certain segment of the public, should be run. The other advertising media include direct mail, which can make a highly detailed and personalized appeal; outdoor billboards and posters; transit advertising, which can reach the millions of users of mass-transit systems; and miscellaneous media, including dealer displays and promotional items such as matchbooks or calendars.
In the 21st century, with an intensely competitive consumer market, advertisers increasingly used digital technology to call greater attention to products. In 2009, for example, the world’s first video advertisements to be embedded in a print publication appeared in Entertainment Weekly magazine. The thin battery-powered screen implanted in the page could store up to 40 minutes of video via chip technology and automatically began to play when the reader opened the page. See also history of publishing; marketing.
For an advertisement to be effective, its production and placement must be based on a knowledge of the public and a skilled use of the media. Advertising agencies serve to orchestrate complex campaigns whose strategies of media use are based on research into consumer behaviour and demographic analysis of the market area. A strategy will combine creativity in the production of the advertising messages with canny scheduling and placement, so that the messages are seen by, and will have an effect on, the people the advertiser most wants to address. Given a fixed budget, advertisers face a basic choice: they can have their message seen or heard by many people fewer times, or by fewer people many times. This and other strategic decisions are made in light of tests of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
There is no dispute over the power of advertising to inform consumers of what products are available. In a free-market economy effective advertising is essential to a company’s survival, for unless consumers know about a company’s product they are unlikely to buy it. In criticism of advertising it has been argued that the consumer must pay for the cost of advertising in the form of higher prices for goods; against this point it is argued that advertising enables goods to be mass marketed, thereby bringing prices down. It has been argued that the cost of major advertising campaigns is such that few firms can afford them, thus helping these firms to dominate the market; on the other hand, whereas smaller firms may not be able to compete with larger ones at a national level, advertising at the local level or online enables them to hold their own. Finally, it has been argued that advertisers exercise an undue influence over the regular contents of the media they employ—the editorial stance of a newspaper or the subject of a television show. In response it has been pointed out that such influence is counteracted, at least in the case of financially strong media firms, by the advertiser’s reliance on the media to convey a message; any compromise of the integrity of a media firm might result in a smaller audience for the advertising.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.
What is the purpose of advertising
A 1900 advertisement for Pears soap.
Advertising is any paid form of communication from an identified sponsor or source that draws attention to ideas, goods, services or the sponsor itself. Most advertising is directed toward groups rather than individuals, and advertising is usually delivered through media such as television, radio, newspapers and, increasingly, the Internet. Ads are often measured in impressions (the number of times a consumer is exposed to an advertisement).
Advertising is a very old form of promotion with roots that go back even to ancient times. In recent decades, the practices of advertising have changed enormously as new technology and media have allowed consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues. From the invention of the remote control, which allows people to ignore advertising on TV without leaving the couch, to recording devices that let people watch TV programs but skip the ads, conventional advertising is on the wane. Across the board, television viewership has fragmented, and ratings have fallen.
Print media are also in decline, with fewer people subscribing to newspapers and other print media and more people favoring digital sources for news and entertainment. Newspaper advertising revenue has declined steadily since 2000. [1] Advertising revenue in television is also soft, and it is split across a growing number of broadcast and cable networks. Clearly companies need to move beyond traditional advertising channels to reach consumers. Digital media outlets have happily stepped in to fill this gap. Despite this changing landscape, for many companies advertising remains at the forefront of how they deliver the proper message to customers and prospective customers.
The Purpose of Advertising
Advertising has three primary objectives: to inform, to persuade, and to remind.
Left: Informative Advertising Right: Persuasive Advertising
When people think of advertising, often product-focused advertisements are top of mind—i.e., ads that promote an organization’s goods or services. Institutional advertising goes beyond products to promote organizations, issues, places, events, and political figures. Public service announcements (PSAs) are a category of institutional advertising focused on social-welfare issues such as drunk driving, drug use, and practicing a healthy lifestyle. Usually PSAs are sponsored by nonprofit organizations and government agencies with a vested interest in the causes they promote.
Public Service Announcement (PSA)
Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising
As a method of marketing communication, advertising has both advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, advertising creates a sense of credibility or legitimacy when an organization invests in presenting itself and its products in a public forum. Ads can convey a sense of quality and permanence, the idea that a company isn’t some fly-by-night venture. Advertising allows marketers to repeat a message at intervals selected strategically. Repetition makes it more likely that the target audience will see and recall a message, which improves awareness-building results. Advertising can generate drama and human interest by featuring people and situations that are exciting or engaging. It can introduce emotions, images, and symbols that stimulate desire, and it can show how a product or brand compares favorably to competitors. Finally, advertising is an excellent vehicle for brand building, as it can create rational and emotional connections with a company or offering that translate into goodwill. As advertising becomes more sophisticated with digital media, it is a powerful tool for tracking consumer behaviors, interests, and preferences, allowing advertisers to better tailor content and offers to individual consumers. Through the power of digital media, memorable or entertaining advertising can be shared between friends and go viral—and viewer impressions skyrocket.
The primary disadvantage of advertising is cost. Marketers question whether this communication method is really cost-effective at reaching large groups. Of course, costs vary depending on the medium, with television ads being very expensive to produce and place. In contrast, print and digital ads tend to be much less expensive. Along with cost is the question of how many people an advertisement actually reaches. Ads are easily tuned out in today’s crowded media marketplace. Even ads that initially grab attention can grow stale over time. While digital ads are clickable and interactive, traditional advertising media are not. In the bricks-and-mortar world, it is difficult for marketers to measure the success of advertising and link it directly to changes in consumer perceptions or behavior. Because advertising is a one-way medium, there is usually little direct opportunity for consumer feedback and interaction, particularly from consumers who often feel overwhelmed by competing market messages.
Developing Effective Ads: The Creative Strategy
Effective advertising starts with the same foundational components as any other IMC campaign: identifying the target audience and the objectives for the campaign. When advertising is part of a broader IMC effort, it is important to consider the strategic role advertising will play relative to other marketing communication tools. With clarity around the target audience, campaign strategy, and budget, the next step is to develop the creative strategy for developing compelling advertising. The creative strategy has two primary components: the message and the appeal.
The message comes from the messaging framework discussed earlier in this module: what message elements should the advertising convey to consumers? What should the key message be? What is the call to action? How should the brand promise be manifested in the ad? How will it position and differentiate the offering? With advertising, it’s important to remember that the ad can communicate the message not only with words but also potentially with images, sound, tone, and style.
Effective wordless advertisement
Marketers also need to consider existing public perceptions and other advertising and messages the company has placed in the market. Has the prior marketing activity resonated well with target audiences? Should the next round of advertising reinforce what went before, or is it time for a fresh new message, look, or tone?
Along with message, the creative strategy also identifies the appeal, or how the advertising will attract attention and influence a person’s perceptions or behavior. Advertising appeals can take many forms, but they tend to fall into one of two categories: informational appeal and emotional appeal.
The informational appeal offers facts and information to help the target audience make a purchasing decision. It tries to generate attention using rational arguments and evidence to convince consumers to select a product, service, or brand. For example:
The following Black+Decker commercial relies on an informational appeal to promote its product:
The emotional appeal targets consumers’ emotional wants and needs rather than rational logic and facts. It plays on conscious or subconscious desires, beliefs, fears, and insecurities to persuade consumers and influence their behavior. The emotional appeal is linked to the features and benefits provided by the product, but it creates a connection with consumers at an emotional level rather than a rational level. Most marketers agree that emotional appeals are more powerful and differentiating than informational appeals. However, they must be executed well to seem authentic and credible to the the target audience. A poorly executed emotional appeal can come across as trite or manipulative. Examples of emotional appeals include:
The following Heinz Ketchup commercial offers a humorous example of an ad based entirely on an emotional appeal:
Developing the Media Plan
The media plan is a document that outlines the strategy and approach for an advertising campaign, or for the advertising component in an IMC campaign. The media plan is developed simultaneously with the creative strategy. A standard media plan consists of four stages: (a) stating media objectives; (b) evaluating media; (c) selecting and implementing media choices; and (d) determining the media budget.
Media objectives are normally started in terms of three dimensions:
The process of evaluating media involves considering each type of advertising available to a marketer, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses associated with each medium. The table below outlines key strengths and weaknesses of major types of advertising media. Television advertising is a powerful and highly visible medium, but it is expensive to produce and buy air time. Radio is quite flexible and inexpensive, but listenership is lower and it typically delivers fewer impressions and a less-targeted audience. Most newspapers and magazines have passed their advertising heydays and today struggle against declining subscriptions and readership. Yet they can be an excellent and cost-effective investment for reaching some audiences. Display ads offer a lot of flexibility and creative options, from wrapping busses in advertising to creating massive and elaborate 3-D billboards. Yet their reach is limited to their immediate geography. Online advertising such as banner ads, search engine ads, paid listings, pay-per-click links and similar techniques offers a wide selection of opportunities for marketers to attract and engage with target audiences online. Yet the internet is a very crowded place, and it is difficult to for any individual company to stand out in the crowd.
Table: Advertising Media Strengths and Weaknesses
| Advertising Media Type | Strengths | Weaknesses |
| Television | ||
| Radio | ||
| Newspapers | ||
| Magazines | ||
The evaluation process requires research to to assess options for reaching their target audience with each medium, and how well a particular message fits the audience in that medium. Many advertisers rely heavily on the research findings provided by the medium, by their own experience, and by subjective appraisal to determine the best media for a given campaign.
To illustrate, if a company is targeting young-to-middle-aged professional women to sell beauty products, the person or team responsible for the media plan should evaluate what options each type of media offers for reaching this audience. How reliably can television, radio, newspapers or magazines deliver this audience? Media organizations maintain carefully-researched information about the size, demographics and other characteristics of their viewership or readership. Cable and broadcast TV networks know which shows are hits with this target demographic and therefore which advertising spots to sell to a company targeting professional women. Likewise newspapers know which sections attract the eyeballs of female audiences, and magazines publishers understand very well the market niches their publications fit. Online advertising becomes a particularly powerful tool for targeted advertising because of the information it captures and tracks about site visitors: who views and clicks on ads, where they visit and what they search for. Not only does digital advertising provide the opportunity to advertise on sites that cater to a target audience of professional women, but it can identify which of these women are searching for beauty products, and it can help a company target these individuals more intensely and provide opportunities for follow-up interaction.
The following video further explains how digital advertising targets and tracks individuals based on their expressed interests and behaviors.
You can read a transcript of the video here.
Selection and Implementation
The media planner must make decisions about the media mix and timing, both of which are restricted by the available budget. The media-mix decision involves choosing the best combination of advertising media to achieve the goals of the campaign. This is a difficult task, and it usually requires evaluating each medium quantitatively and qualitatively to select a mix that optimizes reach and budget.
Unfortunately, there are few valid rules of thumb to guide this process, in part because it is difficult to compare audiences across different types of advertising media. For example, Nielsen ratings measure audiences based on TV viewer reports of the programs watched, while outdoor (billboard) audience-exposure estimates are based on counts of the number of automobiles that pass particular outdoor poster locations. The “timing of media” refers to the actual placement of advertisements during the time periods that are most appropriate, given the selected media objectives. It includes not only the scheduling of advertisements, but also the size and position of the advertisement.
There are three common patterns for advertising scheduling:
Budget
When considering advertising as a marketing communication method, companies need to balance the cost of advertising–both of producing the advertising pieces and buying placement—against the total budget for the IMC program. The selection and scheduling of media have a huge impact on budget: advertising that targets a mass audience is generally more expensive than advertising that targets a local or niche audience. It is important for marketers to consider the contribution advertising will make to the whole. Although advertising is generally one of the more expensive parts of the promotion mix, it may be a worthwhile investment if it contributes substantially to the reach and effectiveness of the whole program. Alternatively, some marketers spend very little on advertising because they find other methods are more productive and cost-effective for reaching their target segments.
Anatomy of an Advertisement
Advertisements use several common elements to deliver the message. The visual is the picture, image, or situation portrayed in the advertisement. The visual also considers the emotions, style, or look-and-feel to be conveyed: should the ad appear tender, businesslike, fresh, or supercool? All of these considerations can be conveyed by the visual, without using any words.
The headline is generally what the viewer reads first—i.e., the words in the largest typeface. The headline serves as a hook for the appeal: it should grab attention, pique interest, and cause the viewer to keep reading or paying attention. In a radio or television ad, the headline equivalent might be the voice-over of a narrator delivering the primary message, or it might be a visual headline, similar to a print ad.
In print ads, a subhead is a smaller headline that continues the idea introduced in the headline or provides more information. It usually appears below the headline and in a smaller typeface. The body copy provides supporting information. Generally it appears in a standard, readable font. The call to action may be part of the body copy, or it may appear elsewhere in a larger typeface or color treatment to draw attention to itself.
A variety of brand elements may also appear in an advertisement. These include the name of the advertiser or brand being advertised, the logo, a tagline, hashtag, Web site link, or other standard “branded” elements that convey brand identity. These elements are an important way of establishing continuity with other marketing communications used in the IMC campaign or developed by the company. For example, print ads for an IMC campaign might contain a campaign-specific tagline that also appears in television ads, Website content, and social media posts associated with the campaign.
Hoover advertisement with ad elements shown.
Ad Testing and Measurement
When organizations are poised to make a large investment in any type of advertising, it is wise to conduct marketing research to test the advertisements with target audiences before spending lots of money on ads and messages that may not hit the mark. Ad testing may preview messages and preliminary ad concepts with members of a target segment to see which ones resonate best and get insight about how to fine-tune messages or other aspects of the ad to make them more effective. Organizations may conduct additional testing with near-final advertising pieces to do more fine-tuning of the messages and visuals before going public.
To gauge the impact of advertising, organizations may conduct pre-tests and post-tests of their target audience to measure whether advertising has its intended effect. A pre-test assesses consumer attitudes, perceptions, and behavior before the advertising campaign. A post-test measures the same things afterward to determine how the ads have influenced the target audience, if at all.
Companies may also measure sales before, during, and after advertising campaigns run in the geographies or targets where the advertising appeared. This provides information about the return on investment for the campaign, which is how much the advertising increased sales relative to how much money it cost to execute. Ideally advertising generates more revenue and, ultimately profits, than it costs to mount the advertising campaign.