Creative Strategy for Electronic Media

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Traditional Advertising Media

This week, we will focus mainly on the different forms of advertising media.

  1. First, we will look at the more traditional media including television, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
  2. Our second lecture will discuss the more current and newer media including social media and electronic media such as email.
Television

Most of the households in the United States currently have at least one television.

In 1950, only 9% of US households had a television, but by 1965, it grew to 92.6%.

As of 2012, 114,700,000 or 97% had at least one television and 84% have two or more sets ("TV Basics," 2012).

Televisions reach the majority of the market, but at the same time, it is expensive and technology has made it easy for consumers to skip advertisements.

As of 2012, Nielsen estimates that 43% of US households have a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) and in 2009, Americans spent an average of over 8 hours watching television each day ("TV Basics," 2012).

For television (and radio) programming, the 24-hour day is broken down into dayparts. 

Dayparts are the time segments used to divide the day for programs and advertising scheduling. These dayparts are further grouped into three main areas: daytime, fringe time, and prime time. 

Each daypart has an associated demographic for a target market. For example, daytime viewers are usually women, mature consumers, people working from home, and at certain times children. 

While the dayparts can vary slightly depending on the market, below is a general listing according to Nielsen:

Advertisers have several choices when it comes to television: network advertising (national ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox), spot advertising (by market), cable advertising (ESPN, MTV, Discovery), syndicated (individual stations buying programs-often reruns), and local advertising (local markets).

Large businesses that have national products often use network or spot advertising.

  • Network advertising allows these companies to purchase time slots from the networks for the mass audiences.
  • Spot advertising is similar, but the advertising is limited to selected markets.
  • Cable and local advertising is focused on a more specific target market by geodemographics, demographics, or psychographics.
  • Television reaches mass markets, can be flexible, and the creativity possibility is almost endless. However, marketers need to payattention to the target market because television advertising is expensive.

According to analysis by New York independent media agency TargetCast tcm, the average price of a 30-second spot in the first quarter of 2011 was $108,956, up 5 percent from the year-ago period. The percentage increase translates to an average hike of $5,000 per ad (Crupi, 2011, para.2). 

Finally, with the advent of the Digital Video Recorder (DVR), the number of consumers viewing television ads is eroding. Before, advertisers only had to worry about viewer going to the kitchen during an ad, now they are battling with the fast forward button.

Radio

About 92% Americans, aged 12 and older listen to the radio each week ("Radio Today," 2013). That is a large audience to hear a company's advertisement.

Radio advertisers have several points to consider: the daypart (similar to TV) and the station format. Radio dayparts are broken into morning and afternoon drive times, midday, evening, and late night.

The station format focus on the type of programming aired (classic rock, news, sports). See http://www.arbitron.com/radio_stations/formats.htm for a complete list of station formats.

Radio is able to reach a specific target market through the daypart and station format. It is generally cheaper than television advertisements and able to be produced rather quickly.

Radio, like TV, relies on the consumer's recall for the advertisement to be effective. However, unlike television, radio does not have a visual aspect so often the radio is "background noise" whether in the car or at home.

Magazines and Newspapers

There are over 3000 magazines currently in print and Sunday circulation of newspapers hovered around 50 million in 2012 (Edmonds, Guskin, Mitchell, & Jurowitz, 2013). However, those numbers continue to declineas consumers use Smartphones and apps for information usually found in print. 

  • Consumers continued to cut back on print magazines in 2011, although the decline eased slightly from previous years. Overall print magazine circulation was down 1% in the last audited period (final six months of 2011), according to PEJ’s analysis of data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

On the other hand, there are some data emerging that the demand for magazines on tablets and smartphones may provide a boon to the industry. (Matsa, 2012, para. 1).

The same holds true for newspapers as well. While there is an overall decline in print media, the magazines and newspapers are taking advantage of electronic medium.

  • Like radio, both magazines and newspapers are able to reach a specific target market.
  • If in print, they are also tangible--so the consumer can tear out a page and tack it to the refrigerator as a constant reminder.
  • However, both require lead times (which vary according to the frequency of print) and can be overlooked easily by someone flipping through the pages.

 

Internet and Social Media

The traditional forms of media are now supplemented with electronic medium.

  • At the end of 2009, almost 82 million households had internet access and that number is expected to rise to over 100 million households by 2016 ("TV Basics," 2012).
  • With the increase in the number of consumers exposed to the internet, internet advertising has kept pace. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), for the first quarter of 2013, internet ad revenues reached $9.6 billion, which is up almost 16% over the first quarter of 2012 ("First Quarter 2013," 2013). 

Internet advertising can take many formats including banner ads, pop-up ads, email, and search engine advertising/marketing.

Banner, or display ads, are static advertisements usually found at the top of web pages.

Spending for banner ads was projected to grow by $12.3 billion in 2011 and to reclaim the top online ad segment from search ads within a few years (Lee & Ahn, 2012, para. 2).

  • Banner ads encourage consumers to click on the ad through to the advertiser's web site.
  • Click-through rates (CTRs) are the measurement of the number of users that click on the banner ad.
    • The CTR for most ads is actually rather low. Banner ads are used more for brand awareness--even if the person viewing the ad did not click.

Pop-up ads are advertisements that suddenly appear, or pop-up, in front of a web page to encourage the consumer to click-through to the advertiser's web site.

  • Pop-up ads are often considered more intrusive than the banner ads as the user had to manually close this extra window.
  • They have been deemed enough of an annoyance that Internet Service Providers (ISP) offer pop-up blockers.

Interstitial ads are those that run in between web pages; these are the full-page ads that you see while waiting for the destination web page to load.

  • A different between interstitial and regular pop-up ads is that pop-up ads usually have the "X" to enable the viewer to close out of the advertisement.

Superstitial ads are the animated ads that run over the top of a web page.

  • You might see them on the Yahoo web page when all of a sudden an additional visual appears flying across the screen. Usually superstitial ads doe have the "X" option to close the ad, but in some cases, you have to really look for it.

Email marketing is another way to reach your target audience.

  • In fact, the Small Business Administration (SBA) considers it one of the most effective ways to keep in touch with customers (SBA, n.d.).
  • It is relatively inexpensive and a business can target the recipients or send out a mass mailing. When a company asks for and receives permission from the consumer to send messages, this is "opt-in" emailing.
  • The email messages sent without permission are considered spam.
  • Consumers also tend to be wary of clicking on unsolicited emails because of another practice called phishing.
  • This illegal practice happens when an email that appears to be from a legitimate company is sent out and usually directs the receiver to a fake web page.

Search engine advertising or search engine marketing uses advertising to place a message in front of a consumer already looking for a specific product or service. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO),

  • The concept behind Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is quite simple: when a consumer or business person searches the Web through either a text box or by clicking through a directory hierarchy, they are in "hunt mode."
  • This mode is unique because it indicates that the person is looking for information, usually of a direct or indirect commercial nature.
  • Marketers understand that this "hunt mode" means that the searcher may very well be somewhere in the buying cycle, researching a product or service to try and satisfy an immediate need or future need. That makes search engine results some of the best sources of targeted traffic, whether that traffic originates from "organic" unpaid search listings or paid advertising listings (Lee, n.d., para. 3).
Social Media

By the end of 2009, 86% of those on the Internet used social networking and 9% of users always look at the ads on those sites.

In addition, 28% of shoppers in the United States said that social media influenced their purchasing decisions in 2009 ("TV Basics," 2012).

By 2011, approximately 83% of Fortune 500 companies were using some sort of social media to connect with consumers (Naylor, Lamberton, & West, 2012, p. 105). Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr offer marketers the chance to reach out and communicate with consumers about their brands. Facebook alone boasts over 1 billion users. 

 

 

 

 

Review the readings and lectures for this week.

Create the second part of the Advertising portion of the Marketing Communications Plan using the business and information presented in the Case Study. Meet the following requirements:

  • In 200-300 words, explain the creative strategy that will be used for the plan for social media, internet, and electronic advertising.
  • Create a website or Facebook page for the company. Provide a rough sketch, blueprint (use ClipArt), or detailed explanation of the premise of the ads. (pdf files will be accepted). Consider if the company sells items on the website or page?
  • Using feedback, update and make changes to the previous section of the plan.
  • Please adhere to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (6th ed., 2nd printing) when writing and submitting assignments and papers 

 

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