Advertising

Generally speaking, advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by an identified sponsor. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.

Media

Some commercial advertising media include billboards (outdoor advertising), street furniture components, printed flyers, radio, cinema and television ads, web banners, Web Popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, taxicab doors and roof mounts, musical stage shows, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, the opening section of streaming audio and video, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

Related Topics:
Media - Billboard - Outdoor advertising - Street furniture components - Flyer - Radio - Cinema - Television - Web banner - Popups - Skywriting - Bus stop - Magazine - Newspaper - Town crier - Sides of buses - Taxicab - Musical stage shows - Diapers - Medium

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Covert advertising embedded in other entertainment media is known as product placement.

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The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format and this is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual US Super Bowl football game is known as much for its commercial advertisements as for the game itself, and the average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached $2.3 million (as of 2004).

Related Topics:
TV commercial - Super Bowl - 2004

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Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.

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E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as "spam". A message is spam only when it is unsolicited and in bulk.

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Some companies have proposed to place messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see propaganda).

Related Topics:
Companies - Corporate logo - Rocket - International Space Station - Subliminal advertising - Mind control - Propaganda

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Unpaid advertising (also called word of mouth advertising), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it by zealot"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun ("Hoover" = "vacuum cleaner", "Kleenex" = "tissue") -- these must provide the stuff of fantasy to the holder of an advertising budget.

Related Topics:
Word of mouth - Brand - Hoover - Vacuum cleaner - Kleenex - Tissue

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The most common method for measuring the impact of mass media advertising is the use of the rating point (rp) or the more accurate target rating point (trp). These two measures refer to the percentage of the universe of the existing base of audience members that can be reached by the use of each media outlet in a particular moment in time. The difference between the two is that the rating point refers to the percentage to the entire universe while the target rating point refers to the percentage to a particular segment or target. This becomes very useful when focusing advertising efforts on a particular group of people. For example, think of an advertising campaign targeting a female audience aged 25 to 45. While the overall rating of a TV show might be well over 10 rating points it might very well happen that the same show in the same moment of time is generating only 2.5 trps (being the target: women 25-45). This would mean that while the show has a large universe of viewers it is not necessarily reaching a large universe of women in the ages of 25 to 45 making it a less desirable location to place an ad for an advertiser looking for this particular demographic.

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