Q1. What do you mean by advertising? Discuss the recent trends in advertising in detail.

Ans. Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers

or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services. It includes the
name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to
persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand. These brands are
usually paid for or identified through sponsors and viewed via various media. Advertising can
also serve to communicate an idea to a mass amount of people in an attempt to convince them to
take a certain action, such as encouraging 'environmentally friendly' behaviors, and even
unhealthy behaviors through food consumption, video game and television viewing promotion,
and a "lazy man" routine through a loss of exercise. Modern advertising developed with the rise
of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mass media can be defined as any
media meant to reach a mass amount of people. Several types of mass media are television,
internet, radio, news programs, and published pictures and articles.

Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or

services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort
to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. Different types of media
can be used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as newspapers,
magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text
messages. Advertising may be placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company or other
organization.

Non-commercial advertisers that spend money to advertise items other than a consumer product
or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental
agencies. Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service
announcement.

Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include
wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio,
cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web
popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers,
sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes (logo jets), in-flight advertisements on
seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens,
musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of
bathroom, stalls, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the
opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and
supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a
medium is advertising.

The purpose of advertising is to:

 Make customers aware of your product or service

  Convince customers that your company's product or service is right for their needs

 Create a desire for your product or service

 Enhance the image of your company

 Announce new products or services

 Reinforce salespeople's messages

 Make customers take the next step (ask for more information, request a sample, place an
order, and so on)

 Draw customers to your business.

Current trends

Rise in new media

With the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner,
Pop under, advergaming, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) are now
commonplace. Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an
advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising
community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute
their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them. In the last three quarters of 2009 mobile and
internet advertising grew by 18.1% and 9.2% respectively. Older media advertising saw declines:
−10.1% (TV), −11.7% (radio), −14.8% (magazines) and −18.7% (newspapers ).

Niche marketing

Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche
market using niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of The
Long Tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the
most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience
possible. However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche
content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers
with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to
viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products. Among others, Comcast
Spotlight is one such advertiser employing this method in their video on demand menus. These
advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out
more about a particular business or practice at any time, right from their home. This causes the
viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.
Crowd sourcing

The concept of crowd sourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated advertisements.
User-generated ads are created by consumers as opposed to an advertising agency or the
company themselves, most often they are a result of brand sponsored advertising competitions.
For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the Crash the Super Bowl
contest, allowing consumers to create their own Doritos commercial. Chevrolet held a similar
competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs. Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in
the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays relaunched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl.
The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads. In fact, the
winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad
Meter as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were
found by Nielsen's Buzz Metrics to be the "most buzzed-about".

This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated advertising
competitions on behalf of a company. Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions
for brands such as Google, Nike, Hershey’s, General Mills, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Zinio,
and Mini Cooper. Crowd sourced advertisements have gained popularity in part to its cost
effective nature, high consumer engagement, and ability to generate word-of-mouth. However, it
remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the advertising industry is still unclear.

The easy accessibility of the Internet has taken the advertising world by storm with many
companies taking to the online medium to advertise their goods and services to a global
audience. However, the latest research figures are proving that the most effective advertising
medium continues to be the print media.

Q2. What is the importance of communication in advertising? Critically examine print

media and electronic media with real life examples.

Ans. Advertising and communication are interlinked. It executes its task when it appends to
propelling the consumer from one level to another in the communication field; cognizance of the
product existence, knowledge of the features and advantages, balanced or arousing certainty of
the benefits. Finally, this activity turns into sale. Advertising aim is to execute certain parts of
communication job with greater economy, speed and volume.

Mail order advertising moves a prospect through the entire cycle of communication spectrum.
It can shift a reader from unawareness to cash-in-advance or cash-on-delivery sale. In consumer
package goods, advertising can carry the major part of the marketing communication work load;
from awareness right up to action, i.e., products sold through self-service stores. In industrial
goods, advertising is a harmonizing strength of communication, and personal selling is the
dominating force of communication. In door-to-door selling, advertising has no role of
promotion and personal selling can sell the products to consumers in a few minutes of persuasive
selling.

In essence, advertising goals are expressed in terms of communication spectrum. There is a

controversy in the advertising world regarding objectives of advertising as a means of
communication. Communication programmes may be action oriented. Mail order advertising is a
case where the underlying objective is action, i.e., to secure sales.

However, advertising to reduce after purchase doubts and anxieties of buyers particularly in the
purchase of costly durable goods such as homes, cars and major appliances, has no objective of
securing action., i.e., sales. Such advertising is not action-oriented. It wants to give information
or change attitudes. It has only the goal of communication.

Electronic Media has a clear edge over print media even if ‘new media’ (for e.g. The Internet) is
not included in it. Print media is more of a 'habit' with people and still caters to a sizeable
population. But electronic media offers a lot of choice to the people, especially to the youth(GEN
Y),the largest growing segment of our population and more importantly, has the ability to
maintain the pace at which the preferences and demands of the Gen Y changes. The shrinking
readership of the print publications perhaps is testimony to the changing media consumption
pattern of the people today. Although I don’t see an immediate threat to the print media, more so
because it is a centuries old media, yet I believe it definitely is not the media of the future.
Moreover, electronic media is visually more appealing and more effective in not only conveying
a message but by virtue of being a frequency medium, is also effective in registering it, thus
ensuring high brand recall amongst viewers & potential customers. For the advertisers and
advertising agencies, it provides exciting opportunities to experiment with new and innovative
ideas which reduces the media's dependence on traditional source of revenue like selling Free
Commercial Time (FCT), while broadening their horizons and opening up new avenues for
generating revenues through 360 degrees promotional campaigns and by providing interactive
business solutions. The lack of such scope for experimentation in Print Media would ultimately
affect its revenues in a big way and might as well be the factor which decides its future. Add to it
the new media (Internet, etc.) which too forms part of the electronic media today, I believe
Electronic Media is the media of the future.