QUALITIES WHICH ARE DEEMED HELPFUL IN SELECTION OF MEDIA FOR ADVERTISING

 MEDIA FOR ADVERTISING

Advertising media selection is the process of choosing the most cost-effective media for advertising, to achieve the required coverage and number of exposures in a target audience. Media of advertising are the vehicle that convey advertising messages to large group of people. They bring consumers and producers closer to each other.

TYPES OF MEDIA

Print Media

Broadcast Media

Folk Media

Static Media

QUALITIES WHICH ARE DEEMED HELPFUL IN SELECTION OF MEDIA FOR ADVERTISING

To determine which medium we should use to advertise our product we must first understand our target market. This includes the following:

                  Knowing who they are:          

                  Their buying process: 

                  Who are the final decision makers

                  Where they buy:         

                  How they buy

                  What the competition is doing

SELECTING THE CORRECT MEDIA

The next step is to determine which medium type (TV, Radio, Display Ads) will reach your desired targets.

Advertising Objectives

Target Audience

Budget Constraints

Characteristics of the Product

Type of Message Appeal

Relative Cost

Clutter

Reach

Frequency

Advertising Objectives:       The advertising objectives sometimes help in the selection of media. Therefore it is of utmost importance to define the objectives first and then decide which medium would be most appropriate in fulfilling those objectives. An institutional advertising campaign may be run in a different media then would a product advertising campaign for the same company.

Target Audience:      The first objective of a media plan is to select the target audience: the people whom the media plan attempts to influence through various forms of brand contact. Because media objectives are subordinate to marketing and advertising objectives, it is essential to understand how the target audience is defined in the marketing and advertising objectives. The definition may or may not be exactly the same, depending on the marketing and advertising objectives and strategies. The target audience is often defined in terms of demographics and psychographics Demographics refer to selected population characteristics used to categorize the target public. Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location for example, the target audience of a media plan could be “individuals who are 26-to-45 years old with yearly household income of $50,000 or more” or “all households with children age 3 years or younger.” Some advertisers believe that demographic definitions of a target audience are too ambiguous, because individual consumers that fit such definitions can be quite different in terms of their brand preference and purchase behavior. For example, think about the students in a media planning class. Even though some of them are the same age and gender, they may like different brands of toothpaste, shampoo, cereal, clothing, and other products. Therefore, media planners use psychographics to refine the definition of the target audience. Psychographics is a generic term for consumers’ personality traits (serious, funny, conservative), beliefs and attitudes about social issues (opinions about abortion, environment, globalization), personal interests (music, sports, movie going), and shopping orientations (recreational shoppers, price-sensitive shoppers, convenience shoppers). Mazda, for example, doesn’t define its target audience by age, income or gender, but by psychographic principles. Mazda targets people who have a need for self expression, are young at heart, and love to drive.

Primary and Secondary Target Audience

 

The target audience in a media plan can be either primary or secondary. A primary target audience is one that plays a major role in purchase decisions, while a secondary target audience plays a less decisive role. In the case of video game players, for example, children’s requests often initiate a purchase process; parents often respect their children’s brand selection. Thus, it is reasonable to consider children as the primary target audience and their parents as the secondary target audience. If the parents are aware of the advertised brand, it will be easier for children to convince them of the purchase. Media planners need to examine and identify the role of consumers in shopping, buying and consuming a product or service to target the right groups of consumers effectively.

The Budget Available:         The advertising budget is concerned with two major decisions about how advertising effort will be carried out. First, how much is to be spent for advertising in the coming period? Second, how much budget is to be allocated to different areas within the company’s total sales territory? And how much budget is allocated for media? Because the budget determines the weight of advertising effort which is an important variable in determining the effectiveness of an entire advertising effort. The product might be one for which actual demonstration on TV is highly desirable. Yet the advertiser would be unable to sponsor such a program because its cost would exceed the total advertising budget.

Characteristics of the Product:       The general characteristics of the product may also strongly influence the type of media used. That is , if the product has a certain personality or image, certain media may be appropriate to maintain or develop that image; whereas other media may tend to diminish or destroy this personality or image The sometimes certain individual media do not take advertising for certain specific types of product. Restrictions also may prohibit use of certain media by advertisers of specific items.

Type of Message Appeal:    Three characteristics that a message or appeal should have are

1. What makes an appeal meaningful?

2. What makes an appeal distinctive?

3. What makes an appeal believable? Which media can be more supportive in answering these three questions? The type of message believed most effective in selling the product or service will, in many cases dictate the type of media to be used to carry the advertising campaign.

Relative Cost:            The relative cost is another factor which influences the selection of media. The total budget available and the ability to do an effective job of advertising within the budget in a particular type of medium is significant. When the type of media has been determined, then the cost factor becomes a matter of the relative cost of the individual media. In case of newspapers, this relationship is determined as per centimeter per column, and in case of magazines, the cost per page is worked out. This factor is important only when several media appear approximately equal on the basis of all other criteria used then the advertiser probably would select the medium which is most economical on the cost comparison basis.

Clutter:           In any medium, the advertiser’s message competes with other advertisements for the consumer’s attention. Media in which the advertiser must expect a great number of competitive messages are termed as “Cluttered”. Most newspapers are highly competitive cluttered media vehicles. This competition of attention places considerable burden on the creator of the advertisement, to develop an approach that somehow stands apart from clutter. The problem is particularly acute for the advertiser who can not afford to purchase large space units.

Reach:                        Media planners use reach to set their objective for the total number of people exposed to the media plan. Reach is one of the most important terms in media planning and has three characteristics. First, reach is a percentage, although the percentage sign is rarely used. When reach is stated, media planners are aware of the size of the target audience. For example, if a media plan targets the roughly 5 million of women who are 18-25 years old, then a reach of 50 means that 50% or 2.5 million of the target audience will exposed to some of the media vehicles in the media plan. Second, reach measures the accumulation of audience over time. Because reach is always defined for a certain period of time, the number of audience members exposed to the media vehicles in a media plan increases over time.

Frequency:    Frequency is a measure of repetition. How many times do you want your advertisement on certain medium? Frequency of the advertisement is also an important factor in the media selection process. If a now product has been launched then it needs a greater frequency. While greater frequency mean, putting greater amount of money on a specific media. So, advertiser selects the media keeping in mind the frequency of the advertisement.