Online advertising is an increasingly important part of any
brand’s marketing strategy. With 51% of B2B (business to business) marketers
saying they are increasing budgets for content marketing, it is no wonder that
brands have to make effective campaigns online to keep a hold of their market
share. It is also evident that the types of online advertising campaigns vary
hugely. A more pressing question even is where to put your online advert? Now a
lot of articles online focus on these questions, so to put it simply I’ll
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this marketing strategy as a whole.
A key strength of online advertising is having the ability
to target your particular demographic through sites relevant to them and target
audiences when it is more effective. For example, stationary stores can put
more advertising content before a semester start and on social media platforms
that the young demographic are more likely to use like Facebook and Twitter.
Furthermore, when you put out online adverts you can track the success and
exposure of the content much more effectively unlike TV adverts. Also, the type
of content is usually more interactive and hence can improve engagement with
the audience. Content come in video, audio, pictorial and written formats mainly
but the options will inevitably grow due to further technological progress. The
lengths of video adverts vary too from a few seconds to minutes long, hence
more control in video length than TV advertising. Due to the nature of a lot of
social media platforms, becoming ‘viral’ as an advert is often the aim and a
good indicator to show if your campaign is succeeding, much like the ‘Lexus’
advert I reviewed earlier.
Although, there are a few drawbacks to online advertising
such as adverts being intrusive to users. This is a problem as pop-ups and
random video/audio suddenly appearing when you think you are just casually
reading an article for example can be off-putting to say the least. This does
cause a fair amount of annoyance to online users who often call on ‘adblockers’
to eradicate online adverts completely. This leads nicely on to the question
‘How effective are these adverts actually?’ The answer is it varies. They can
be effective but they need to be bold, engaging and user friendly which quite a
few are, but the ones that are not feel like irritating background noise and their
presence practically ignored by online users.
TV advertising is relatively established now and it has been
suggested by many it is becoming less effective at its job of reaching a wide
demographic and high quantity of people because of the growth of internet
usage. To an extent this argument makes some valid points especially when
considering younger audiences who are viewing more and more content online
rather than on TV. The point that TV advertising is essentially to interrupt
people while watching programmes is also a valid one, evident from many people
fast forwarding recorded or non-live TV shows when adverts are on. Finally,
budgets are usually much higher for shorter 30 second TV adverts than online
advertising budgets.
But, there are many advantages that TV still holds over
online advertising. One is that it can still consistently capture a wide
audience of people especially older audiences that online advertising fails to
target as effectively as it does younger audiences. The simplicity of the
concept of a 30-second advert is what makes a TV advert so beautiful. A
traditional advert unlike a lot of online adverts will occupy that whole screen
trying to persuade you to buy into a brand. It doesn’t annoy you or come out of
the blue; you are expecting it as you are watching a TV programme. This is why
TV advert budgets are high, they have to impress you and stand out otherwise
they lose a very wide demographic. A well-made TV advert can make such more of
an impact than a simple brand banner or video popping up on your screen; this
is why more money is put into this form of advertising.
To sum up, there is a place for both forms of advertising
and hybrid campaigns bringing the two together is likely to be the way forward,
such as the ‘Lexus’ advert I reviewed earlier. Issues arise from both forms of
advertising such as the intrusive nature of online adverts and younger
audiences viewing more content online. I think primarily where a TV advert
cannot be challenged is its ability to cause huge emotional impact or shock to
a viewer. The growth of online advertising will inevitably be very important
for brand management, but it will unlikely overshadow TV advertising, instead
work with this existing platform and hence complement it.
References:
Your business marketing strategy should be effective, reliable and affordable. I am also going to make use of the best marketing opportunities and will have to keep an eye on the budget segment as well. Recently, I have been considering the business texting service. Was just wondering if you could help regarding it.
ReplyDelete