24.06.2024
Advertising is a powerful marketing tool used to promote goods and services, as well as to attract the attention of the target audience to them. For any business, advertising is an urgent necessity, without promotion, a commercial project is doomed to stagnation. Currently, almost all companies at least use social media promotion, and many other types and means of advertising are widespread.
Advertising, as a type of communication activity, has been used by mankind for centuries. In fact, the merchant, who touted his goods at the top of his voice in the Byzantine market of the tenth century, was engaged in nothing more than advertising. With the progress of technological progress, many more advanced means of communication have appeared, allowing for an order of magnitude increase in the coverage and effectiveness of advertising actions. Over time, the development of advertising has led to its division into many different directions, involved through a variety of distribution tools.
In addition to promoting goods and services, as well as increasing their sales, advertising plays a leading role in the formation of the company's reputation capital. Large commercial organizations often have a strategy for promoting their business, which includes all types and forms of advertising and is prescribed for years and even decades ahead. The result of such global actions is the widespread popularity of the brand and its positive perception by consumers.
Advertising is equally important for businesses on a much smaller scale, in the segment of medium or small businesses. In such situations, a good help for entrepreneurs who are thinking about the question "how to make an advertisement" will be their pages on various social networks. This method of distributing information to consumers is a fairly low-cost solution, while demonstrating convincing effectiveness.
Types of modern advertising are divided according to a number of classification grounds, depending on the methods of advertising influence used, types of advertising media, target audience, functional purpose, territorial coverage and other criteria. In most cases, a global advertising campaign includes several types of advertising, with the goal of maximizing the reach of the audience of potentially interested consumers.
What is advertising: criteria for determining
Despite the fact that advertising has been present in people's lives for a long time, there is no universal, widely accepted definition of this term. According to general characteristics, advertising is called a communication activity, the result of which should be informing the target audience and attracting its attention to the object of advertising. In addition, advertising in business is also motivational and is designed to motivate consumers to choose certain goods or services.
Thus, the following defining signs of advertising can be distinguished:
- Distribution on a commercial basis. The advertiser pays for the placement of advertisements on various media, whether it is the rotation of an advertisement on a television channel, the publication of material on Internet sites or the placement of a banner on a busy street.
- Mass character. Most of the advertising volume is published through various media, using the Internet, radio, television and print media for this purpose. Such types of advertising as handouts and souvenirs with brand symbols are also produced in large quantities. On this basis, advertising can be confidently attributed to a non-personal type of communication.
- Persuasion. The publication of commercial advertising always has a specific purpose – to encourage representatives of the target audience to make a choice in favor of a particular product or service provider.
At the same time, there is still no consensus among prominent experts in the field of advertising on the criteria for determining advertising. This is partly due to the fact that in their quest to interest the audience, marketers and designers often show considerable ingenuity and create original methods of presenting advertising information.
Why do I need advertising, what functions does it perform?
As a rule, the strategy of an advertising campaign implies the achievement of certain goals. In higher educational institutions and specialized courses, advertising functions such as:
- Economic. Advertising is designed to stimulate demand for a particular product or service from a particular supplier. The ultimate goal here is to increase the company's profits and expand its presence in the relevant market segment.
- Social. The influence of advertising on a person as a means of forming public opinion has long been underestimated, but now it is considered a recognized tool for creating behavioral models and standards of thinking.
- Marketing. Advertising often serves to demonstrate any advantages of a product, tells about its useful properties and seeks to interest consumers in it. Thus, there is a formation of mass demand for a specific type of product.
- Communicative. One of the important functions of advertising is to convey information about a product or service to the end user. In one form or another, advertising often tells about the proposed product, describes its strengths, applications and useful properties.
The functional orientation of advertising may vary depending on the phase of product promotion. For example, when a new product appears on the market, the informative nature of advertising and its notifying function are important, and persuasion is most in demand in the presence of competition and the need to influence the choice of the target audience. Throughout all stages of product promotion, advertising should contribute to the formation of demand and in the long term stimulate its consolidation.
Types of advertising by distribution area
One of the most frequently used methods of classifying advertising is its division by territorial coverage. This approach is based on the field of advertising distribution and identifies the following main groups:
- Local advertising is used in a small area and does not go beyond a separate municipal area. This format is most often in demand among representatives of small businesses. For example, this can include outdoor advertising, presented in the form of decorating the facade of a small store or a service of any services.
- Regional advertising has consumers living in the same city and/or the surrounding area as its target audience. As a rule, an advertising campaign of this scale implies a well-thought-out strategy using various media and means of advertising distribution.
- Nationwide advertising extends to a part of the country's territory or covers it completely. Often, the customer of such advertising is the state, and the message conveyed in it is of a social nature.
- International advertising implies distribution on the territory of two or more countries. As a rule, such an advertising campaign requires the involvement of a large advertising agency with the necessary connections or full-fledged representative offices in all the countries involved.
- Global advertising has the widest possible coverage and is distributed simultaneously in many countries. Only the largest international companies need this kind of promotion.
Types of advertising by media type
In practical application, it is also customary to classify all types of advertising according to the type of advertising medium used according to the channel of transmission of advertising information. When using this approach, the types of advertising services are conditionally divided into media and non-media, from which, in turn, separate functional subgroups can be distinguished.
- Advertising on television is presented in the form of short commercials and is aimed at reaching a mass audience. Such advertising is one of the most expensive formats. The price of rotation is formed depending on the popularity of the channel, the duration and frequency of repeats of the video, as well as the time of day when it will be shown on the air.
- Radio advertising is characterized by large coverage and relatively inexpensive price, pricing principles are similar to those used on television. In addition to advertising spots lasting 20-60 seconds, such advertising also happens in the format of interviews, expert comments or contests organized by the advertiser.
- Advertising in the press has long been considered a leader in the effectiveness of mass coverage, but with the development of technology, it has lost its position. Despite this, advertisements published in periodicals are still considered to be in demand and a powerful tool for advertising impact.
- Outdoor advertising is placed on the streets using the walls of buildings or specially designed structures. At the same time, information can be conveyed using static images or videos broadcast through special screens. Outdoor advertising is often placed directly on the facade of the advertised organization.
- Interior advertising is a kind of antipode to outdoor advertising and is placed indoors. Cinemas, large retail outlets, train stations, airports and many other public places with large internal space are used for this purpose.
- Transit advertising is placed on the exterior surfaces of various vehicles. In addition, the broadcast of commercials through screens installed inside public transport is widely used.
- Print advertising includes a variety of brochures, flyers, booklets and many other materials produced by the printing method. Such advertisements are placed in mailboxes, distributed on streets and thematic events in the form of handouts, glued to walls in public areas, etc.
- Souvenir advertising consists in the manufacture and distribution of various souvenir products with corporate symbols printed on them. T-shirts, magnets, pens, flash drives and many other types of souvenirs are distributed as gifts or prizes during various promotions and promotional events.
Advertising on the Internet
The development of digital technologies has created the opportunity to actively advertise on websites, publish it through social networks and send it out in messengers and mail services. More than half of the global advertising market is represented by online advertising, which makes it the most popular way to promote a commercial product. Online advertising has a wide range of advantages, among which one can note the simplicity of performance analysis and the ability to quickly adjust an advertising campaign according to the requirements of the moment. The main types of advertising services on the Internet are represented by the following methods of promotion:
- Contextual advertising is selective and is shown only to those users who have already shown interest in similar products or services. Such ads are most often displayed in search engine results, on various websites or on the pages of mail services.
- Banner ads are placed on various websites, social networks or mobile applications. As a rule, for the publication of banner ads, a site is chosen that corresponds to the subject of the ad context. For example, an advertisement for an online game will be shown on a site that is interesting to gamers, and a banner designed to promote a line of cosmetics on a resource whose target audience consists mainly of women.
- Targeted advertising. The display of such ads to a certain audience can be flexibly configured according to age, gender, habitat, social status and other important characteristics of potential customers. The use of such advertising is widespread on social networks, where users themselves provide the data necessary for such filtering.
- Search advertising displays ads on the first pages of the search results of various search engines without having to spend time on search engine optimization. Such ads fall into the field of vision of people who have formed a specific query in the search engine that echoes the semantic load of the ad block. This method works with a pre-interested audience, which gives the customer significant time savings.
- Retargeting and remarketing are concepts that essentially mean the same thing, the only difference is in the service through which the ad is configured. Retargeting is used in Yandex, and remarketing is used in Google. When using this method, ads are shown to those users who have already visited a site with a relevant topic or viewed certain products.
- Email newsletters are sent directly to the email addresses of users collected in the contact database. This method has a rather controversial effectiveness, since spam emails are often deleted without being read. However, this is offset by the cheapness of this method of advertising and the mass coverage of it.
- Native advertising is one of the least intrusive ways to promote, it is woven into the content and causes the least rejection from the audience. Such a soft demonstration of the product is carried out through storytelling, articles and posts, or various promotional events.
- Video ads are most positively perceived by users and provide better engagement than text or image ads. In addition, this format allows you to more clearly demonstrate the capabilities of the product, which has a beneficial effect on the informative content of the advertising message.
High-quality analytics has a huge impact on the effectiveness of any advertising, during which specialists collect data about potential customers and track the impact of the campaign on the target audience. Various automation systems play an important role in this process, which help to optimize the advertising campaign and achieve maximum efficiency from it.
The advertising industry does not stand still and is constantly growing with new methods of influencing public opinion and promoting a commercial product. The role of advertising in business has an importance that cannot be overestimated, and its competent application is one of the most powerful means of competition.
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