Advertising as a tool of communication

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it”

– Stephen Butler Leacock

        Advertising is a type of mass communication with the audience. It is generally one sided that is from the company to the consumers or potential user of the product or services. This type of communication generally attempts to convince or encourage the potential consumers to purchase or consume more of a particular brand of product and its services.Advertising is a significant mode of communication is helpful in the promotion of commercial goods and services, moreover it can also be utilized to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues such as Don’t drink and drive, AIDS, Save water, electricity, trees etc.

       Advertising is one of the most operative technique with products that can be distinguished from similar products based on consumer accepted quality difference. Internet, Cinema, Television, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, Journal, Video Game, Billboard, Skywriting, Sandwich Board, Transit Cards, are the different mediums used to convey the message. Through this post we would throw some light on the two most influential mediums of advertisements that are Tv Ads and print media.

Tv Ads

In this era of technology, media is everywhere. The messages we see while watching television, exploring the Internet, driving on the road, and even while scrolling through your Facebook account. If we carefully analyze and evaluate every commercial and each advertisement, we would find that most were inventive and unique. There are various advertisements that leaves a long lasting impression on the minds of people.

There are some major elements to consider when trying to convey a message to an audience through TV ads that they will remember and that will make them want to buy the product. The three factors are as follows:

Explanation

Explaining and elaborating the message is key, whether the explanation is through language, video, or images.

Emotional Appeal

Emotional appeal is the key element and most important aspect of creative advertising because emotions build memories. If the audience forms a connection while watching a commercial or seeing a billboard, there are more chances that they will remember the product.

Originality

It is crucial that the ad is original. If people see a commercial that is analogous to another that they have seen before, then they will just be thinking about the other company’s commercial the whole time they watch.

Amazing advantages of Tv Ads :

1.The TV is a flexible and convenient advertising medium, due to its extensive popularity and the ease with which a message can reach millions of viewers nationally and internationally.

2.TV advertising uses audio and visual effects to create a lasting effect.

3.It provides you with the benefits of Mass Coverage. This is because almost every house has a television so it covers a very broad range of audience.

Print Media

Print media is one of the ancient and basic forms of mass communication. It includes newspapers, magazines, weeklies, monthlies and other forms of printed journals. In this digital age the print media has totally ushered the world of advertisement. In a recent studies conducted by various companies including Deloitte and Google has revealed that people put more trust in the print media than in online media. The reason for this is that newspapers and magazines, in spite of the revolution of the online media, are still considered to be more authentic sources for any type of information.

We distinguish between following different types of print media for brands: advertising through newspapers and magazines, use of direct mail, customer magazines, brochures, catalogues, door drop, and pamphlet.

There are a lot of benefits of print media and some of them are listed below:

1.One of the most significant benefit of print media is tangibility. Among the explanations why many people prefer print is related to the feel of the paper, having it in their hands means that the content is real, it exists.

2.In a lot of ways, print is the ideal marketing medium. It is available in both small and large numbers, can be retrieved easily, and is engaging, creative and versatile.

3.The key to successful marketing is engagement, grabbing your customer attention through interesting content before rewarding them with a worthwhile product, service or any offer.

4.Print Media increase the ROI. Researches have shown that adding print to the advertising media mix will increase the ROI of the overall campaign.

New Trends in Advertising

AI in advertising

We have seen huge growth in targeted advertising, where the message is made to fit the viewer. For years, the quest for advertisers has been to ensure that their message is really hitting its mark. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and its associated technologies, can help do that. AI helps eliminate the guesswork in targeted advertising. With access to relevant information about a cohort (or even an individual audience member), advertisers can ensure that messages that aren't effective, or that work against a brand's positioning, don't get through.

In addition, AI will likely help engineer a major upgrade in programmatic advertising. A powerful tool for optimizing campaigns already, programmatic advertising will get even more accurate, targeting audiences, verticals and customers with far greater precision and cost effectiveness.

Content is (still) king

Ever since the early dawn of media, content has been a major focus for advertisers. To engage customers, you have to give them something. After nearly a decade of social media as a constant in our everyday lives, consumers have come to expect blog posts, videos, social media updates, and other authentic content when engaging with a brand. Now that everyone is "doing" content, you need to do it better in order to stand out and break through the clutter.

As mentioned earlier, AI can help build a better content strategy. By better targeting audiences, companies can more effectively hone their stories, blog posts, videos and other content pieces to tailor fit and engage their users for a longer period.

Contextual advertising

Thanks to GDPR, the new European protocol on user privacy, online advertising is set to undergo major changes in 2019. The "right to be forgotten" that GDPR prescribes means that companies can't collect information about people without their explicit consent. How can companies run targeted advertising campaigns without personalized data?

The answer is contextual advertising: determining the characteristics of a target audience based on the content of the web pages they visit. General data about the interests of visitors to that page gives advertisers a clear context of how to appeal to those visitors. With legislators in the United States considering adopting rules (as is already the case in California) similar to those of GDPR, the importance of context to advertisers is likely to grow.

More video than ever

Generation Z, the cohort born roughly between 1995 and 2015, will become the biggest single population group in the world in 2019; already, one third of the world's population was born since the year 2000. One thing this group likes to do is watch videos; according to an infographic by Awesomeness TV, the average Gen Zer spends watches about 68 videos a day.

What that means, of course, is that video is going to be an even more important advertising channel in the years to come. An even more effective way of using video -- especially for Gen Z -- is to enable them to participate in creating those videos. According to a study by the Guardian, Gen Z is very creative and tends to trust their own cohort over others. Enabling them to creatively engage with a brand could go a long way to getting them on board and enable your brand to better harness the power of sharing.

Connected TV and over-the-top ad growth to continue

As cord-cutting increases and more viewers move toward connected/smart TV and over-the-top (OTT) app viewing -- and away from linear TV viewing -- advertisers are becoming enamored with CTV/OTT advertising.

A seminal study by Freewheel indicates that ad views on OTT grew 35 percent between Q2 2017 and Q2 2018. That was in a year when some 33 million Americans were set to drop pay TV altogether. That number will probably grow in the next few years, as people replace cable subscriptions with the growing number of devices (Apple TV, Amazon TV, Roku, etc.) and apps that offer a huge variety of content.

That content has, until recently, been "immune" to advertising. But, as consumers move away from linear TV and toward connected/smart TV and OTT app viewing, advertisers will as well, but they will need to consider new ad models and formats that are more aligned with these on-demand viewing experiences.

Because of differences in the way ads are delivered and in the way effectiveness is measured -- and because advertisers have a greater ability to zero on their specific audiences -- the ads they run on TV will need to be revamped in order to ensure advertisers get the ROI they seek.

Voice search advertising breakout

Nobody really knows how many Echos and Google Homes are out there -- estimates going into the holiday season claim about 50 million -- and by the end of the year, there are likely to be millions more. It's too tempting a market for Amazon and Google to ignore, and while there have been some outright ads on all the platforms, 2019 is likely to see a more sophisticated approach, such as partnerships with brands that will allow for organic use of the devices, peppered with ads directing consumers to specific products or services.

Solution for Challenges of Today's Advertisement

Challenge 1: Obtaining a full online-offline view of consumers.

Consumers shop online anywhere and anytime, and, because they have so many digital devices, advertisers have an opportunity to fully understand consumer behavior by looking at their cross-screen lives. This affords the promise of greater engagement based on more relevant advertising.

Unfortunately, deciphering online-offline consumer behavior isn’t feasible for the majority of advertisers today. Too many use targeting that isn’t based on real-world, comprehensive views of consumers. Worse, many overly rely on incomplete consumer profiles restricted to over-used cookie pools, retargeting profiles and syndicated data.

Solution 1: Data and platforms that reach and activate consumers across all channels.

In particular, work to capture the following key consumer data points:

• Location Data: A consumer’s location and information about who they are and what they’re interested in, is a high priority for progressive advertisers. However, when a premium is paid for location data, fraud instances tend to spike. Advertisers should pick a highly flexible technology platform that can ingest massive amounts of data from multiple data sources and determine which data to keep and/or filter out, all while focusing on driving impact and providing real-time optimization of advertising campaigns.
• Personalization: Tailoring messaging, channels and timing to the unique needs and preferences of each individual consumer must begin with an examination of the campaign creative to confirm it’s based on signals (such as location) that indicate status.
• Customer Graphs: Building a view of the consumer that can update in real-time is an essential first step in establishing a long-term understanding of customers. This profile can then influence campaign activation by filtering down to the optimal channel for each individual. Customer graphs can also be leveraged to track and measure the success of ad campaigns by displaying true, in-store impact, without relying on traditional, empty online advertising metrics. 

Challenge 2: Meaningfully engage consumers to propel them to purchase.

With consumers today seeing anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements each day, breaking through requires advertisers to reach consumers in the ways they prefer. They also need to be able to fulfill consumer demand at any given moment, on any given screen and at any given place, and activate consumers by getting them into a store and inciting them to buy.

Solution 2: Intelligent media delivery that’s channel agnostic and flexible.

Media companies often have an inherent bias, focusing on an advertising channel that serves them best. The brands that rely on those firms for their advertising efforts often have disjointed campaigns (from the shopper’s point-of-view). Brands need media companies to take into consideration the consumer’s overall behavior, their holistic path to purchase, or how, when and where he/she prefers to receive brand messages and offers.

Rather than taking a biased, channel-focused route, advertisers need media that’s channel agnostic and flexible to how consumers engage. This will help advertisers:

• Understand where consumers are on the path to purchase
• Make a real connection with their audience at the right time
• Create delightful experiences for their buyers
• Deliver powerful brand messaging at scale across the channels that matter

Challenge 3: Understanding what’s moving consumers down the path to purchase.

Many advertising agencies are too focused on overall campaign measurement, rather than analyzing what combination of channel, message and/or product is successfully motivating a segment of consumers to act. Advertisers need to know not only how their campaign performed, but how it’s contributing to brand success and how the parts of each campaign (i.e. channels, messages, timing, product, etc.) are working.

Solution 3: Measurement and attribution that’s connected to the real world.

To determine what marketing levers and approaches are working (and which one’s aren’t), brands need to expand their data sources to get a 360-degree view of the customer journey. Specifically, they need to:

• Measure how ad spend moves the revenue needle. Engagement metrics such as click-through rates won’t cut it. Brands need to understand real-world sales impact—does the ad actually drive people to a store to purchase the product?
• Do something with the measurement data. It’s not enough to know that a campaign resulted in sales. Advertisers need to analyze the data to understand how their campaign can grow sales with the next campaign.
• Demonstrate the value of the company’s marketing efforts. Brands need to assess foot traffic and sales spikes to understand what drives consumers to stores. Not only can they then see what’s working, but they can share that value with their retail partners.

Challenge 4: Offer value while respecting privacy.

Many advertisers have turned to data in an attempt to target high volumes of consumers in a less intrusive fashion, pulling from IoT based sources such as Google Home, Alexa, etc. However, this new available information raises serious privacy issues. In fact, leveraging such data can appear downright creepy. Worse, the way in which advertisers use this data has been overly-automated and not sufficiently personalized.

Solution 4: Accurate data to drive effective personalization

Respecting privacy, i.e. using existing data to provide relevant, personalized experiences that matter to the consumer, isn’t just an altruistic approach to marketing. Today’s consumers expect it, and brands who understand this can take a pragmatic approach to drive more relevant experiences and achieve better response via cross-channel engagement. Additionally, brands stand to realize significant improvements via in-store results.

If advertisers solve these four key challenges, they will realize immediate engagement with new consumers and deeper, longer-lasting relationships with existing ones which will result in higher sales lifts and increased market share.

Challenges for the Online Advertising Industry

The online advertising industry is facing a number of serious challenges right now. If you don’t have a plan to overcome them, you will find yourself fighting an uphill battle, barely making the progress you want, if any.

And what if you don’t even know what the obstacles are? How can you make a plan to conquer them?

As far as the digital landscape is changing, it can be hard to keep up. That’s why we’re here to give you the research you need to make the right decisions for your brand.

Here are the five biggest obstacles the online ad industry is facing right now:

1. Rapid Growth

The digital landscape just keeps growing.

If you look at the web alone, the number of websites is proliferating at a rapid rate. Trying to decide where to advertise can require extensive research and hours of work. You have to find new sites, evaluate them, and develop strategies for them.

The Internet is no longer the only digital game in town. We’re seeing the growth of personal devices like home assistants, smart watches, smart glasses, and even virtual reality. Figuring out all the new avenues for advertising and how to make the most of them can take up extensive time and resources.

Using a solution like Perion’s Undertone can help you overcome this challenge. Undertone helps brands get their ads on the right websites and platforms to reach their target audience, and it ensures that ads are optimized by device and browser. It can take the burden off brands to do all that research by placing the ads for them, helping them save time and money and getting them a higher return on their investment.

2. Ad Blockers

Ad blockers are costing advertisers billions of dollars.

The software makes it so that many ads do not even appear on the screen, which means that brands never have the chance to make their case, virtually speaking.

What do you do when you can’t even get a viewing for your ads?

Brands are finding success getting around ad blockers with native advertising. Because native ads are designed to look like the editorial content on a site, they are less likely to trigger ad blocking software. At the same time, native ads are also more likely to engage users who have a reflex to avoid ads.

3. Reduced Exposure

Social media was a gift to businesses. It allowed them to reach millions of potential customers for FREE.

Not so much anymore.

The social giants have gotten savvier about what they are doing for businesses on their sites. They’ve stopped giving away the milk for free.

Brands can’t even expect their posts to be seen by the people that follow their page. Facebook has locked down the reach of the posts unless brands pay to promote them. And, sure, brands have other social networks they can use to reach audiences, but no other network has the same audience or the same potential for engagement.

Brands will have to pay more to get their content seen, and they will have to be smarter about how they use social media. A solution like Perion’s MakeMeReach helps brands improve targeting and get more from their posts. Good social media marketing is also a necessity.

4. Increasing Costs

Brands are expected to increase their digital ad spend this year. Part of the reason is that they are putting more money in more places, but part of the reason is that the cost of ads is going up.

Webmasters know what they have. They know how much their traffic is worth. They know how valuable their social media influence is.

Smaller brands looking to make a splash will have to get major capital. Or so it seems.

The solution here is to find smarter ways to spend your money, not just to throw more money at the problem. Undertone helps brands do this by getting placements for ads that make the most impact. When ads are put in front of the right users at the right time and in the right place, the ads are more likely to get the conversions desired. The advertising budget goes farther, resulting in greater profits.

5. Elusive Audiences

Today’s consumers are more stretched than ever.

They don’t have as much disposable income as the generation before them, yet they work more than ever and have more demands on their time. The Internet is a 24/7 assault on their senses and is trying to grab their limited attention in every direction it can.

Most people don’t have the time to read an online article, let alone watch a brand’s video ad. Brands are fighting to capture their audience’s attention, as well as to engage them.

Segmentation has helped brands reach more of their audience. Instead of creating ads for the general audience, which is quite large, brands are focusing on creating ads for smaller segments of that audience. The ads are tweaked according to the specific needs of the individuals based on the research that the brand uncovers.

Greater targeting options from publishers also help (Facebook leads here), as do the use of intent-based signals (Google leads here). Brands are better able to learn what their audiences want or need, and they are better able to target their ads so that they appear only to the people who are going to be most interested in what’s being sold.

New Trends in Advertising

AI in advertising

We have seen huge growth in targeted advertising, where the message is made to fit the viewer. For years, the quest for advertisers has been to ensure that their message is really hitting its mark. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and its associated technologies, can help do that. AI helps eliminate the guesswork in targeted advertising. With access to relevant information about a cohort (or even an individual audience member), advertisers can ensure that messages that aren't effective, or that work against a brand's positioning, don't get through.

In addition, AI will likely help engineer a major upgrade in programmatic advertising. A powerful tool for optimizing campaigns already, programmatic advertising will get even more accurate, targeting audiences, verticals and customers with far greater precision and cost effectiveness.

Content is (still) king

Ever since the early dawn of media, content has been a major focus for advertisers. To engage customers, you have to give them something. After nearly a decade of social media as a constant in our everyday lives, consumers have come to expect blog posts, videos, social media updates, and other authentic content when engaging with a brand. Now that everyone is "doing" content, you need to do it better in order to stand out and break through the clutter.

As mentioned earlier, AI can help build a better content strategy. By better targeting audiences, companies can more effectively hone their stories, blog posts, videos and other content pieces to tailor fit and engage their users for a longer period.

Contextual advertising

Thanks to GDPR, the new European protocol on user privacy, online advertising is set to undergo major changes in 2019. The "right to be forgotten" that GDPR prescribes means that companies can't collect information about people without their explicit consent. How can companies run targeted advertising campaigns without personalized data?

The answer is contextual advertising: determining the characteristics of a target audience based on the content of the web pages they visit. General data about the interests of visitors to that page gives advertisers a clear context of how to appeal to those visitors. With legislators in the United States considering adopting rules (as is already the case in California) similar to those of GDPR, the importance of context to advertisers is likely to grow.

More video than ever

Generation Z, the cohort born roughly between 1995 and 2015, will become the biggest single population group in the world in 2019; already, one third of the world's population was born since the year 2000. One thing this group likes to do is watch videos; according to an infographic by Awesomeness TV, the average Gen Zer spends watches about 68 videos a day.

What that means, of course, is that video is going to be an even more important advertising channel in the years to come. An even more effective way of using video -- especially for Gen Z -- is to enable them to participate in creating those videos. According to a study by the Guardian, Gen Z is very creative and tends to trust their own cohort over others. Enabling them to creatively engage with a brand could go a long way to getting them on board and enable your brand to better harness the power of sharing.

Connected TV and over-the-top ad growth to continue

As cord-cutting increases and more viewers move toward connected/smart TV and over-the-top (OTT) app viewing -- and away from linear TV viewing -- advertisers are becoming enamored with CTV/OTT advertising.

A seminal study by Freewheel indicates that ad views on OTT grew 35 percent between Q2 2017 and Q2 2018. That was in a year when some 33 million Americans were set to drop pay TV altogether. That number will probably grow in the next few years, as people replace cable subscriptions with the growing number of devices (Apple TV, Amazon TV, Roku, etc.) and apps that offer a huge variety of content.

That content has, until recently, been "immune" to advertising. But, as consumers move away from linear TV and toward connected/smart TV and OTT app viewing, advertisers will as well, but they will need to consider new ad models and formats that are more aligned with these on-demand viewing experiences.

Because of differences in the way ads are delivered and in the way effectiveness is measured -- and because advertisers have a greater ability to zero on their specific audiences -- the ads they run on TV will need to be revamped in order to ensure advertisers get the ROI they seek.

Voice search advertising breakout

Nobody really knows how many Echos and Google Homes are out there -- estimates going into the holiday season claim about 50 million -- and by the end of the year, there are likely to be millions more. It's too tempting a market for Amazon and Google to ignore, and while there have been some outright ads on all the platforms, 2019 is likely to see a more sophisticated approach, such as partnerships with brands that will allow for organic use of the devices, peppered with ads directing consumers to specific products or service

Evolution of Indian Advertising

The foundations of professional advertising business in India was led by two English companies J. Walter Thompson and D. J. Keymer’s  Lintas India came on the scene in 1939. However O & M was set up in 1926.

In pre-independence India only press independence was there. In 1930 with the development of radio it emerges as media for advertisement. In 1950s cinema advertisement began. In 1960s professionalization within the ad agencies started. 1970s was the era of media boom. In 1967 radio services were commercialized. It was in the 60s and early 70s that the concept of brand building appeared on the scene. In 1977, DD became commercial and this brought about the qualitative change in Indian advertising. This was also the time for expansion and diversification of agencies. Within its changing color, starting from august 15, 1982 TV emerged as the most powerful medium. In 90s emphases was given on direct marketing. During the time, satellite TV emerges. The major development was the introduction of 24hr movie channels and pay channels. FM radio also comes into picture. Gradually the main era of concern was given to brand equity. This was also the time of internationalization of advertising. In India, the last decade of 20th century has witnessed a phenomenal growth in ad business. In 1990-91 the overall growth in business was recorded to 17.1% and till 1994-95 it improved up to 49.5%

This was due to the first major economy boom in the country. Since then the growth rate has been slowing down and has settled at almost 18% in 1998-99. According to analyst 49.5% growth was an outcome of an irrational response to economic liberalization and the media inflation of 1990s.

As economic policy changes, introduced in 1990s, have opened the door for global competition a new economic era has begun. Aggressive marketing efforts by domestic and foreign business houses are increasing. The emergence of growth of new technologies, availabilities of new media and media vehicles and an increase in middle class income and aspirations have contributed to the phenomenal increase in the level of advertising and other form of promotion.

The future of Indian advertising is bright, provided that those in the profession acknowledge the social responsibility of advertising and conduct themselves in such a way as to be seen as an important part of the economic development effort of the country.

The History of Advertising

Advertising has experienced some major milestones – think the emergence of the printing press in the 1440s, or the huge impact of television.

Since its very first beginnings, which are thought to date back to steel carvings made by the ancient Egyptians, advertising has constantly had to adapt and change to suit new mediums and an increasingly savvy audience.

But there’s been one medium that’s had a bigger impact on advertising than anything before it.

The wonderful World Wide Web.

The internet has revolutionized advertising in the most astounding way. Not only has it changed the way ads are broadcast, but it’s changed the way consumers act towards them.

Then: Traditional Advertising

Let’s take things back to the pre-internet days. The days when advertising was carried out via cheesy infomercials on radio, fuzzy old televisions, and billboards. This was the golden era of advertising, when the whole movement was considered a huge part of society – almost taking on a cultural status.

The first TV ad popped up on screens in 1941 in America – probably a lot later than you’d imagine. Before the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies played each other, viewers saw a brief commercial for Bulova clocks and watches.

Such a small moment set the precedent for the next seventy years.

Back then, adverts were a staunch part of society. Despite the 50s being a tense decade for America during the Cold War, TV viewers felt optimistic and were beginning to loosen their purse strings as prosperity began to rise.

Characters were built around products to create a semblance of connection between viewers and brands (though this idea of a consumer connection didn’t become a priority until later), and famous faces were brought it to sell everything from washing machines to cigarettes.

Take the Marlborough Man, for example, who became a recognizable cultural figure between the 1960s and 1990s. The aim was to turn filtered cigarettes from a feminine phenomenon to a more masculine one with the help of rugged cowboys and a stream of moody looking men. Even today it’s considered one of the best advertisement campaigns of all time.

On television, products and characters began to go hand and hand. Let’s take cereal as an example. Think Tony the Tiger and Frosted Flakes, or the Snap, Crackle, and Pop gnomes for Rice Krispies – both of which are still going strong today.

Despite the different characters and the vastly different selection of products that began to emerge, ads at this time had one purpose: to sell.

Yes, these characters were central to the ads and played a major part in creating an ad culture for consumers, but the product was always at the forefront.

It might have seemed like Tony the Tiger or the Marlboro Man were the epicenters of their aligning ad campaigns, but they simply served as a tool to sell, sell, sell.

Now: Different Motives

Today, the shift in the advertising world has seen the rise of other motives when it comes to commercials. Rather than the sell mentality, ads are focused on community building and brand awareness.

The product is no longer the centerpiece.

The solution to the consumer’s problem is, and hey, guess what, the product just so happens to provide that solution.

Let’s take an example that’s not too dissimilar to the character-led ads of the past. The Dairy Milk Gorilla ad in 2007 didn’t even show or mention Cadbury – the company it was supposed to be advertising.

The simple nature of the ad leant itself perfectly to spoofs, one key way viewers can interact with a brand – almost like a back and forth dialogue. To date, there are more than 300 spoofs of the ad.

Taking things online, Lowe’s “Fix in Six” home improvement ads filmed through the 6-second Vine app aren’t overt ads. The genius videos show solutions to DIY problems in six seconds or less – not only are they fun to watch, but they are also actionable (basically, a dream combination).

The humorous take on home DIY problems has helped it create a friendly persona for its consumers, taking it a step away from “advertiser”. “Fix in Six” isn’t overtly linked to Lowe’s either. There’s no “hey, this is Lowe’s and you need to buy everything in this ad from us” spiel.