Advertising

What is Advertising?

Advertising and Marketing is such a broad medium, it exists on all platforms. It has existed long before any other medium in the form of posters and salesmen.

Poster

An early form of advertising is the poster, these can be placed anywhere; traditionally on street walls, it has progressed onto the walls in our houses as decoration, it exists on the sides of websites, on billboards, in newspapers and magazines and even developed into the flyer (or handout).

Billboards are effective because they exist mainly by roadsides (so they have to be pretty big). The roads they sit beside are often very busy and get masses of traffic in the early and late hours of the day, so it is very effective in appealing to a broad ABC1&2 audience.
An expansion of the billboard, using lights to create large scale screens is a growing marketing tool. Famously seen in Times Sq and Piccadilly Circus, in the far east they are used considerably- notably Tokyo.

Posters exist on smaller roads in the form of bus shelter posters, these are fairly large and can be seen by both drivers and pedestrians. Posters exist on busses themselves, too; on the rear of the bus for the car behind to read, inside the bus for the passengers, and on the sides of the busses for passing vehicles and pedestrians. The trucks and lorries which carry the product themselves have adverts printed on all sides of them for the same reason.

Flyers and handouts are small posters or leaflets which are either handed out by people on streets or collected by interested consumers in public areas. They are effective because everyone who is handed a  handout or picks up a flyer or is posted one has a copy of the advert on their person to read or give to a friend (providing there isn't a bin nearby).

Ads in TV, Radio and Film

In cinemas, adverts often appear before the movie. In the film itself, it is likely that some product placement is used, in James Bond; phones get large closeups, the main character wears an Omega watch, cars from big name manufacturers, in one instance Bond travels on a Virgin plane- the scene had to be cut when British Airways used it as the inflight movie.
On TV, adverts play a major part of our viewing; for non-license or some non-subscription channels, adverts play at the beginning and end of every show, often during the show itself, every 30-15 minutes. Adverts are worse in America, sometimes with four ad breaks in one half hour show. It is unlikely to find product placement in TV shows, usually shows try to avoid using brand names and products.
In radio, ads are played much the way that TV ads are played, every 15-30 minutes, producing a radio advert is considerably cheaper than producing a TV or cinema ad, there are no visuals so it makes it a little more difficult to sell the product, but the cost of making them means that they can be played more.

Ads Online

Adverts probably appear online more than anywhere else. They occur in the same way TV/cinema/radio ads do on sites like YouTube or Spotify, sometimes these apply to websites as well -in popups which open when entering a page or when a page is open but not in use. The most common form of advertising is the banner, which sits in with the rest of the page, like in a newspaper or magazine. The effectiveness of having an ad online is the use of links, when clicking on the advert it takes you directly to the site it is advertising- saving consumers' time, it also means that they won't forget it (because they won't need to remember).