APRD 2000 FINAL (CHP 10-13, 16)

THE PROS AND CONS OF BROADCAST TV ADVERTISING

PROS Mass coverage. A full 98 percent of all U.S. homes have a TV (most have more than one), and viewing time for the average household averages over eight hours. Relatively low cost. Despite the often huge initial outlays for commercial production and advertising time, TV's equally huge audiences bring the cost per exposure down to $2 to $10 per thousand viewers. Some selectivity. Television audiences vary a great deal depending on the time of day, day of the week, and nature of the programming. Advertising messages can be presented when potential customers are watching, and advertisers can reach select geographic audiences by buying local and regional markets. Impact. Television offers a kind of immediacy that other forms of advertising cannot achieve, displaying and demonstrating the product with sound, motion, and full color right before the customer's eyes. Creativity. The various facets of the TV commercial—sight, sound, motion, and color—permit infinite original and imaginative appeals. Prestige. Because the public considers TV the most authoritative and influential medium, it offers advertisers a prestigious image. Hallmark, Xerox, Coca-Cola, and IBM increase their prestige by regularly sponsoring cultural programs on network TV. Social dominance. In North America, most people under age 35 grew up with TV as a window to their social environment. They continue to be stirred by TV screenings of the Olympics, space travel, assassinations, wars, and political scandals around the world. CONS High production cost. One of broadcast TV's greatest handicaps is the high cost of producing quality commercials. Depending on the creative approach, the cost of filming a national commercial today may run from $200,000 to more than $1 million. High airtime cost. The average cost of a prime-time network commercial ranges from $100,000 to $400,000. Special attractions like the Super Bowl cost over $4 million. The cost of wide coverage, even at low rates, prices small and medium-size advertisers out of the market. Limited selectivity. Broadcast TV is not cost-effective for advertisers seeking a very specific, small audience. And it is losing some of its selectivity because of changing audience trends. More women are working outside the home or watching cable TV, hurting advertisers on network soap operas. Brevity. Studies show that most TV viewers can't remember the product or company in the most recent TV ad they watched—even if it was within the last five minutes. Recall improves with the length of the commercial; people remember 60-second spots better than 30-second spots. Clutter. TV advertising is usually surrounded by station breaks, credits, and public service announcements, as well as six or seven other spots. All these messages compete for attention, so viewers become annoyed and confused and often misidentify the product. Zipping and zapping. DVR users who skip through commercials when replaying recorded programs are zipping; remote-control users who change channels at the beginning of a commercial break are zapping.

How Newspapers Are Categorized: Frequency of Delivery

A daily newspaper is published as either a morning or evening edition at least five times a week, Monday through Friday. Of the 1,331 dailies in the United States, 402 are evening papers and 953 are morning papers.21 Morning editions tend to have broader geographic circulation and a larger male readership; evening editions are read more by women. The trend for over a decade has been toward morning publication and away from evening. With their emphasis on local news and advertising, weekly newspapers characteristically serve small urban or suburban residential areas and farm communities. A weekly newspaper's cost per thousand is usually higher than a daily paper's, but a weekly has a longer life and often has more readers per copy.

Pricing Methods

Advertising space on the Internet can be purchased in several different ways, as we will discuss later in the chapter. The most common means is the banner ad, typically billed on a cost-per-thousand basis determined by the number of ads displayed. On most web pages, the base banner rate pays for exposure on a rotating display that randomly selects which ads to show. Another augmentation to the general banner purchase is the keyword purchase, available on major search engines. Advertisers may buy specific keywords that bring up their ads when a user's search request contains these words. Keywords may be purchased individually or in packages that factor in the information categories and subcategories of a search engine site. In the early days of the Internet, some "keyword entrepreneurs" purchased large numbers of keywords from the search engines. They were later able to license these words to third parties at a substantial profit. This model has since changed to a bidding model, effectively killing keyword "entrepreneurs." We will go into more depth on these issues later when we discuss Google's AdSense and AdWords programs. Some publishers will charge their clients according to click-throughs—that is, when a user actually clicks on a banner ad Page 303 to visit the advertiser's landing page. Although the CPM cost for simple impressions is considerably lower, this method is still unpopular with publishers. When an advertiser buys on a per-click basis, the publisher may expose many users to an advertiser's banner message without being able to charge for the service. For advertisers involved in e-commerce, some publishers offer an affiliate marketing program whereby they charge a percentage of the transaction cost. For example, a site devoted to music reviews may have a banner link to an online music retailer. When consumers buy music from the retailer, the site publisher receives a percentage of the sale.

Programmatic Advertising

Advertising in digital media changes the planning process substantially when it is accomplished through programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising is done largely via computer programs that match Internet users to advertisers via an advertising exchange. In essence, buyers don't purchase media, but audiences. The bidding process ensures that those willing to make the highest bid show ads to the most desirable audiences.

Competitive Strategies and Budget Considerations

Advertisers always consider what competitors are doing, particularly those that have larger advertising budgets. This affects the media, mechanics, and methodology elements of the media mix. Several services, like TNS Media Intelligence Adspender, detail competitive advertising expenditures in the different media. By knowing the size of competitors' budgets, the media they're using, the regionality or seasonality of their sales, and any new-product tests and introductions, advertisers can better plan a counterstrategy. Again, the media planner should analyze the company's share of voice in the marketplace. If an advertiser's budget is much smaller than the competition's, the brand could get lost in the shuffle. While it sometimes makes sense to use media similar to the competition's if the target audiences are the same or if the competitors are not using their media effectively, advertisers should generally bypass media that competitors dominate and choose other media in which they can achieve a strong position. When Anne Myers, media director of Palmer Jarvis DDB, Toronto, had to develop a media plan for Panasonic Canada's Power Activator batteries, she didn't have the budget of Energizer or Duracell to work with. So she didn't want to place her ads where theirs were. Myers and her team creatively fashioned a guerrilla media plan that targeted a cynical, hard-to-reach audience, 15- to 22-year-olds, right where they lived—in the clubs, on the street, and on the Internet. The campaign included posters in the dance clubs; sponsorship of popular DJs and VJs; free Power Activator T-shirts, hats, posters, and stickers; an eight-week run of television spots on popular music shows tied to a month-long cross-promotion with a Page 352 new CD release; and a special contest run on a micro website that was linked to Panasonic's home page. The response was excellent: Sales were up 136 percent over the previous year, and the contest promotion generated more than 16,300 entries on the website with a click-through rate of 35 percent.16

Recruitment Advertising

Companies use recruitment advertising to attract new employees. Most recruitment advertising appears in the classified help-wanted sections of daily newspapers or, increasingly more frequently, on the Internet and is placed by the human resources department rather than the advertising department. But many ad agencies now employ recruitment specialists, and some agencies even specialize in recruitment advertising. ■

The Media Planning Framework

Development of a media plan proceeds in much the same way as marketing and advertising planning. First, review the marketing and advertising objectives and strategies and set relevant, measurable objectives that are both realistic and achievable by the media. Next, devise an ingenious strategy for achieving these objectives. Finally, develop the specific tactical details of media selection and scheduling.

Types of sponsorship: Venue Marketing

Finally, an area not covered by IEG's report is venue marketing, a form of sponsorship that links a sponsor to a physical site such as a stadium, arena, auditorium, or racetrack. In 2013, Levi Strauss agreed to pay $220 million for the right to name the San Francisco 49ers' new Santa Clara stadium "Levi's Stadium." The deal is good for 20 years and Levi Strauss has the right to extend their naming rights for an additional 5 years for $75 million. The stadium owner will receive 70 percent of the revenue and the 49ers will receive the balance. Levi Strauss is also expected to be the 49ers' exclusive, non-sportswear apparel partner.36

Satellite TV

For consumers, satellite presents both pros and cons. TechBlog suggests the pros include picture quality, cost, and accessibility. Countering these benefits are reliability, the need to install complicated hardware, and a requirement of a clear line-of-sight from the home to the satellite.8

Measuring Sponsorship Results:

IEG suggests the following pointers for measuring the value of event sponsorships:40 Have clear goals and narrowly defined objectives. Set a measurable goal. Measure against a benchmark. Do not change other marketing variables during the sponsorship. Incorporate an evaluation program into the overall sponsorship and associated marketing program. At the outset establish a budget for measuring results.

Terminal Posters

In many bus, subway, and commuter train stations, space is sold for one-, two-, and three-sheet terminal posters. Major train and airline terminals offer such special advertising forms as floor displays, island showcases, illuminated cards, dioramas (3-D scenes), and clocks with special lighting and moving messages.

The Pros and Cons of Magazine Advertising

Magazines continue to offer a wide variety of benefits to advertisers, including flexible design options, prestige, authority, believability, and long shelf life. Magazines may sit on a coffee table for months and be reread many times. Consumers can read a magazine ad at their leisure; they can pore over the details of a photograph; and they can study carefully the information presented in the copy. This makes it an ideal medium for high-involvement think and feel products. However, like every medium, magazines also have a number of drawbacks (see My Ad Campaign 10-A, "The Pros and Cons of Magazine Advertising"). They are expensive (on a cost-per-reader basis), especially for color ads. And since they typically come out only monthly, or weekly at best, it's difficult to reach a large audience quickly or frequently. For these reasons, many advertisers use magazines in combination with other media—such as newspapers, which we'll discuss later in this chapter. The Pros Flexibility in readership and advertising. Magazines cover the full range of prospects; they have a wide choice of regional and national coverage and a variety of lengths, approaches, and editorial tones. Color gives readers visual pleasure, and color reproduction is best in slick magazines. Color enhances image and identifies the package. In short, it sells. Authority and believability enhance the commercial message. TV, radio, and newspapers offer lots of information but lack the depth needed for readers to gain knowledge or meaning; magazines often offer all three. Permanence, or long shelf life, gives the reader time to appraise ads in detail, allowing a more complete education/sales message and the opportunity to communicate the total corporate personality. Prestige for products advertised in upscale or specialty magazines such as Architectural Digest, Connoisseur, and Town and Country. Audience selectivity is more efficient in magazines than any other medium except direct mail. The predictable, specialized editorial environment selects the audience and enables advertisers to pinpoint their sales campaigns. Examples: golfers (Golf Digest), businesspeople (Bloomberg Businessweek), 20-something males (Details), or teenage girls (Seventeen). Cost-efficiency because wasted circulation is minimized. Print networks give advertisers reduced prices for advertising in two or more network publications. Selling power of magazines is proven, and results are usually measurable. Reader loyalty that sometimes borders on fanaticism. Extensive pass-along readership. Many people may read the magazine after the initial purchaser. Merchandising assistance. Advertisers can generate reprints and merchandising materials that help them get more mileage out of their ad campaigns. The Cons Lack of immediacy that advertisers can get with newspapers or radio. Shallow geographic coverage. They don't offer the national reach of broadcast media. Inability to deliver mass audiences at a low price. Magazines are very costly for reaching broad masses of people. Inability to deliver high frequency. Since most magazines come out only monthly or weekly, the advertiser can build frequency faster than reach by adding numerous small-audience magazines to the schedule. Long lead time for ad insertion, sometimes two to three months. Heavy advertising competition. The largest-circulation magazines have 52 percent advertising to 48 percent editorial content. High cost per thousand. Average black-and-white cost per thousand (CPM) in national consumer magazines is high; some trade publications with highly selective audiences have a CPM over $50 for a black-and-white page. Declining circulations, especially in single-copy sales, is an industrywide trend that limits an advertiser's reach.

Audience Size and Message Weight

Marketers are naturally interested in having their messages exposed to as many customers and prospects as they can afford. So they are also logically most interested in those vehicles that offer the largest audiences.10 The basic way to express audience size is simply to count the number of people in a vehicle's audience. This is what media research firms like Nielsen do for broadcast media, typically using a statistical sample to project the total audience size. For print media, firms like the Audit Bureau of Circulations verify a vehicle's subscribers and newstand sales (the circulation) and then multiply by the estimated number of readers per copy (RPC) to determine the total audience. RPC takes into account the pass-along rate, the number of people who read a magazine or newspaper without actually buying it. For example, most households subscribe to a single issue of a newspaper, even though multiple family members read it. Media planners often define media objectives by the schedule's message weight, the total size of the audience for a set of ads or an entire campaign, because it gives some indication of the exposure of the campaign in a given market. There are two ways to express message weight: gross impressions and gross rating points. If planners know the audience size, they can easily calculate the number of advertising impressions in a media schedule. An advertising impression is a possible exposure of the advertising message to one audience member. It is sometimes referred to as an opportunity to see (OTS). Why? Because when a newspaper or magazine is delivered or bought, that counts as an impression. It cannot be determined whether the individuals who received those vehicles actually saw any particular ad. By multiplying a vehicle's total audience size by the number of times an advertising message is delivered during the period, planners arrive at the gross impressions, or potential exposures, possible in that vehicle. Then, by summing the gross impressions for each medium used, they know the total gross impressions for the schedule (see Exhibit 14-5). With large media schedules, though, gross impressions can run into the millions and become difficult to comprehend, so that's where the concept of ratings comes in. The rating is simply the percentage of homes exposed to an advertising medium. Percentages are not only simpler numbers to deal with; they are also more useful in making comparisons. One rating point is equal to 1 percent of a given population group. When we hear that a particular TV show garnered a 20 rating, it means 20 percent of the households with TV sets (expressed as television households or TVHH) were tuned in to that show. The higher a program's rating, the more people are watching.11 This definition applies to many media forms, but it is most commonly used for radio and TV. By adding the ratings of several media vehicles (as we did for gross impressions) we can determine the message weight of a given advertising schedule, only now it's expressed as gross rating points (GRPs) (see Exhibit 14-6). When we say a schedule delivered 440 GRPs, that means the impressions generated by our schedule equaled 440 percent of the target market population. For broadcast media, GRPs are often calculated for a week or a four-week period. In print media, they're calculated Page 347 for the number of ads in a campaign. For outdoor advertising, they're calculated on the basis of daily exposure. In the calculation of message weight, advertisers ignore the fact that there is overlap or duplication. As a result, certain individuals within the audience may see the message several times while others don't see it at all. So, while message weight gives an indication of audience size, it does not reveal much about who is in the audience or how often they are reached. This fact led to the development of other media objectives, including reach, frequency, and continuity.

PR activites: Special-Events Management

The sponsorship and management of special events is a rapidly growing field. In fact, it has become such an important topic that we devote the next major section of this chapter to it, following our discussion of PR tools

BUYING TIME AND SPACE IN DIGITAL INTERACTIVE

Media planners cannot think of the Internet in mass media terms. Interactive media are personal audience venues. That means one on one. So cost per thousand, ratings points, and share of audience don't really mean the same things in the interactive world. With interactive media, advertisers aren't always building sales volume. They're building relationships, one customer at a time. And the care companies exercise in buying and developing their interactive programs and integrating them with their mass media programs will determine their overall success. Internet spending is no longer a small part of the ad budget. In fact, it is the fastest-growing segment. Exhibit 12-6 lists the top 10 Internet advertisers ranked by spending. The best marketers are testing extensively. That means being willing to lose money for a while, which is, of course, not exciting to most advertisers or agencies. Many direct marketers are investing heavily in online catalogs. The effort is clearly worth it. Amazon.com averages nearly $300 million in sales a day.1

other types of newspapers

Most Sunday newspapers also feature a Sunday supplement magazine. Some publish their own supplements, such as the Los Angeles Magazine of the Los Angeles Times. Other papers subscribe to syndicated supplements; Parade magazine has a readership of more than 63 million readers every week.24 Printed on heavier, coated paper stock, Sunday supplements are more conducive to color printing than newsprint, making them attractive to national advertisers who want better reproduction quality. Another type of newspaper, the independent shopping guide or free community newspaper, offers advertisers local saturation. Sometimes called pennysavers, these shoppers offer free distribution and extensive advertising pages targeted at essentially the same audience as weekly newspapers—urban and suburban community readers. Readership is often high, and the publishers use hand delivery or direct mail to achieve maximum saturation.

Commercials at Service Stations

Prefilm commercials capitalize on an obvious reality: Filmgoers don't have much to do while they wait for the movie to start so perhaps they will find watching entertaining commercials preferable Page 278 to doing nothing. This same logic lies behind the emerging practice of showing ads on service station gas pumps. The appeal for advertisers who purchase time on Gas Station TV(www.gstv.com) is that the audience is "basically tethered at the pump for an average of four to four-and-a-half minutes," according to GSTV CEO David Leider. His company offers national and local advertisers the chance to present standard-length commercials with ad costs that are comparable to spot cable. Early national sponsors include Chevrolet, Pepsi, Allstate, Goodyear, and Walmart.

SELECTING MEDIA

Selecting the most appropriate media mix for an advertising campaign requires two distinct skills: understanding the unique characteristics of the various media alternatives and determining which medium will most efficiently and effectively reach the campaign's target audience. The chapters in Part 5 present the unique elements of the most common media classes. Then, in Chapter 14, we will examine how media planners and buyers decide which media to use, when to use them, and how to purchase them. In that chapter, we will also discuss audience measurements. For now, it will help if you have a basic understanding of two key terms: reach—the number of different people exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period of time; and frequency—the average number of times those people are exposed to that medium during that period of time.

How Newspapers are categorized: Type of Audience

Some dailies and weeklies serve special-interest audiences, a fact not lost on advertisers. They generally contain advertising oriented to their special audiences, and they may have unique advertising regulations.

Types of sponsorship: Causes

Sponsorship of charity events and educational institutions is a tried-and-true PR activity that often fits with the IMC strategy of mission marketing. A number of large corporations (including Chevrolet, AT&T, American Airlines, Pepsi, and Kodak) co-sponsored the Live Aid concerts, for instance. In 2012, marketers spent an estimated $1.7 billion in cause-related sponsorships.

Types of sponsorship: Arts

Symphony orchestras, chamber music groups, art museums, and theater companies are always in desperate need of Page 409 funding. In 2012, sponsors spent an estimated $890 million to support the arts—one of the least funded of the major sponsorship categories. What this means is that this is still a relatively untapped area, and it provides outstanding sponsorship and underwriting opportunities for both national and local firms interested in audiences on the highest end of the income scale.

Mail-response lists

The advertiser's second most important prospects are people who respond to direct-mail pieces from other companies—especially those with complementary products or services. Mail-response lists are the house lists of other direct-mail advertisers, and they can be rented with a wide variety of demographic breakdowns.

THE PROS AND CONS OF DIRECT-MAIL ADVERTISING

The Pros Selectivity. Direct mail helps advertisers communicate directly with the people most likely to buy. Computerized mailing lists group people by occupation, region or state, income, and other characteristics. Intensive coverage and extensive reach. Everyone has a mailbox. With direct mail, an advertiser can reach 100 percent of the homes in a given area. Flexibility. Direct-mail advertising can be uniquely creative, limited only by the advertiser's ingenuity and budget and postal regulations. Advertisers can produce direct-mail pieces fast and distribute them quickly. Control. Preprinted direct-mail pieces enable an advertiser to precisely control circulation and reproduction quality. Personal impact. Advertisers can personalize direct mail to the needs, wants, and whims of specific audiences without offending other prospects or customers. Exclusivity. There are no distractions from competitive ads (in solo mailings). Response. Direct mail achieves the highest response of any advertising medium. About 15 percent of the responses arrive within the first week, so the advertiser can quickly judge a campaign's success. Testability. Direct mail is good for testing prospect reactions to products, pricing, promotions, copy approaches, sales literature, and so on. The Cons High cost per exposure. Direct mail has the highest cost per exposure of any major medium, about 14 times as much as most magazine and newspaper advertising. Delivery problems. The mass media offer precise delivery times, but the postal service makes no delivery commitments on third-class mail. And up to 10 percent of mailings may be undeliverable because people move. Lack of content support. Direct mail must capture and hold the reader's attention without the support of editorial or entertainment content. Selectivity problems. Effective direct mail depends on correctly identifying the target audience and obtaining a good list. Some groups of prospects, such as physicians, are so saturated with direct mail they ignore it. Negative attitudes. Many consumers think of direct mail as junk mail and automatically throw it away. This may also negatively impact the product's image. Environmental concerns. Some consumers see direct mail as landfill fodder. Some direct marketers (Eddie Bauer, L.L.Bean) print parts of their catalogs on recycled paper, and now new de-inking facilities will make more catalogs recyclable. Antispam laws. The CAN-SPAM Act and similar laws impose many requirements, making it more difficult for marketers to electronically send prospective clients unsolicited marketing materials. Direct mail has two main drawbacks: cost and the "junk mail" image, both of which are almost inescapable. No other medium (except personal selling and consumer targeting on the Internet) has such a high cost per thousand. For this reason, many small Page 332 advertisers participate in cooperative (rather than solo) mailings with companies such as ADVO, which serves most major U.S. cities. ADVO mails an envelope containing a coupon for each participating company to targeted zip codes.

THE PROS AND CONS OF OOH ADVERTISING

The Pros Accessibility. OOH carries the message 24 hours per day and cannot be fast-forwarded, put aside, zapped, or turned off. Reach. For the same dollars, outdoor reaches over 86 percent compared with spot TV (76 percent), radio (72 percent), and newspaper (72 percent) of the same target audience in the same city. The audience is mostly young, educated, affluent, and mobile—an attractive target to many national advertisers. Frequency. Most people reached with OOH advertising see it daily. Geographic flexibility. OOH advertisers can place their advertising where they want it nationally, regionally, or locally in more than 9,000 markets across North America. Demographic flexibility. Messages can be concentrated in areas frequented or traversed by young people, upper-income people, or people of specific ethnic backgrounds. With computerization, it's possible to characterize outdoor audiences by age, sex, income, and lifestyle down to the block level. Cost. OOH offers the lowest cost per exposure of any major advertising medium. Rates vary depending on market size and concentration, but the GRP system makes cost comparisons possible from market to market. Impact. Because advertisers can build up GRPs very fast, OOH is the ideal medium for those with a short, simple message. Creative flexibility. OOH offers a large display and the spectacular features of lights, animation, and brilliant color. New fiber optics, giant video screens, and backlit display technologies offer even more creative options. Location. OOH can target consumers by activity, reaching shoppers on their way to the store, businesspeople on their way to work, or travelers on their way to the airport, thereby influencing consumers just before they make a purchase decision. The Cons Fleeting message. Customers pass quickly, so OOH advertising must be intrusive to be effective. The design and copy must tell a story briefly and crisply, and the words must sell. Environmental influence. OOH messages are influenced by their environment. Placement in a rundown area can detract from a product's image. Audience measurement. Audience demographics are difficult to measure. Not every passerby sees or reads the ad, so some media buyers distrust audience estimates. Control. Unlike print and broadcast ads, it's difficult to physically inspect each OOH poster panel. Planning and costs. OOH messages usually require six to eight weeks of lead time for printing and posting. High initial preparation cost may discourage local use. And for national advertisers, buying OOH is complex. As many as 30 companies may sell ad space in a single market. Availability of locations. OOH is so popular that demand for good locations now exceeds the supply. Visual pollution. Some people object to OOH advertising as visual pollution. They may have a negative reaction to advertisers who use it.

DEVELOPING A MEDIA STRATEGY: THE MEDIA MIX

The media strategy describes how the advertiser will achieve the stated media objectives: which media will be used, where, how often, and when. Just as marketers determine marketing Page 350 strategy by blending elements of the marketing mix, media planners can develop media strategies by blending the elements of the media mix.

Exposure Frequency

To express the number of times the same person or household has an opportunity to see a message—a radio spot, for example—in a specified time span, media people use the term frequency. Whereas reach measures the breadth, frequency measures the intensity of a media schedule, based on repeated exposures to the vehicle or the program. Frequency is important because repetition is the key to learning and memory. Frequency is calculated as the average number of times individuals or homes are exposed to the vehicle during a specific Page 348 period of time. For instance, suppose in our hypothetical 100,000-person market that 20,000 people tune in to WKKO and have three OTSs during a four-week period, and another 20,000 have five OTSs. To calculate the average frequency, divide the total number of exposures by the total reach: For the 40,000 listeners reached, the average frequency, or number of exposures, was four. Once we understand reach and frequency, we have another, simple way to determine the message weight. To calculate gross rating points, just multiply a show's reach (expressed as a rating percentage) by the average frequency. In our radio example, 40 percent of the radio households (a 40 rating) had the opportunity to hear the commercial an average of four times during the four-week period: Reach×Frequency=GRPs40×4=160 GRPs Thus, the message weight of this radio campaign would be equal to 160 percent of the total market—or 160,000 gross impressions.

CORPORATE ADVERTISING

When a company wants to communicate a PR message and control its content, it may use a form of corporate advertising. In an integrated marketing communications program, corporate advertising can set the tone for all of a company's public communications. Corporate advertising covers the broad area of nonproduct advertising, including public relations advertising, institutional advertising, corporate identity advertising, and recruitment advertising.

Types of TV advertising

When buying cable TV, an advertiser can buy ads over the full schedule of a channel because cable networks typically aim all of their programming to relatively specific audiences. The Lifetime and Family channels heavily weigh programs toward women; MTV targets viewers ages 16 to 25. Cable companies sell their network channels in bundles at a discount and offer discounts for run-of-schedule positioning—multiple ad purchases they can place throughout a channel's daily schedule (see My Ad Campaign 11-C, "The Pros and Cons of Cable TV Advertising").

Mobile-Specific Advertising

While it still constitutes a relatively small share of all advertising globally, mobile ad spending continued its track record of double-digit growth in 2015. The most common form of mobile advertising, banner advertising (also called WAP, wireless access protocol, banner) is very similar to online banner advertising. Banner advertising is standardized by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) which, much like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) for online banner advertising, has issued guidelines and standards for mobile web advertising (they can be found here: http://mmaglobal.com/policies/global-mobile-advertising-guidelines).

Public Relations Tools: Printed materials

A house organ is a publication about happenings and policies at the company. An internal house organ is for employees only. External house publications go to company-connected people (customers, stockholders, suppliers, and dealers) or to the general public. They may take the form of a newsletter, tabloid-size newspaper, magazine, or even a periodic e-zine (a magazine published online or sent by e-mail). Their purpose is to promote goodwill, increase sales, or influence public opinion. A well-produced house organ can do a great deal to motivate employees and appeal to customers. However, writing, printing, and distributing can be expensive—and very time-consuming.

Public Relations Tools: News Releases and Press Kits

A news release (or press release), the most widely used PR tool, consists of one or more printed or electronic pages of information issued to generate publicity or shed light on a subject of interest. News releases cover time-sensitive hard news. Topics may include the announcement of a new product, promotion of an executive, an unusual contest, landing of a major contract, or establishment of a scholarship fund. For pointers in preparing releases, see My Ad Campaign 16-B, "How to Write a News Release." A press kit (or media kit) supports the publicity of special events such as press conferences, grand openings, and trade shows. It includes a basic fact sheet of information about the event, a program or schedule of activities, and a list of the participants and their biographical data. The kit also contains a news story about the event for the broadcast media, news and feature stories for the print media, and any pertinent photos and brochures.

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: Fundraising and Membership Drives

A public relations person may be responsible for soliciting money for a nonprofit organization or for a cause the company deems worthwhile, such as the United Way or a political action committee (PAC). Charitable organizations, labor unions, professional societies, trade associations, and other groups rely on membership fees or contributions. The PR specialist must communicate to potential contributors or members the goals of the organization and may integrate promotional tie-ins to publicize the drive or encourage participation. In the process, the company PR people may work closely with the advertising department or agency to create ads promoting the particular cause or to publicize the company's involvement with the cause in product ads.

Sponsorship and Events

A sponsorship is a cash or in-kind fee paid to a property (which may be a sports, entertainment, or nonprofit event or organization) in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property.16 In other words, just as advertisers pay a fee to sponsor a program on radio or TV, they may also sign on to sponsor a bike race, an art show or chamber music festival, a fair or exhibition, or the Olympics. The sponsorship fee may be paid in cash or in kind (that is, through a donation of goods and services). For instance, if a local TV station signs on as a sponsor of a 10K run, it will typically pay for some part of its sponsorship by providing advertising time for the event. Cause marketing, a related strategy, is a partnership between a for-profit company and a nonprofit organization, which increases the company's sales while raising money and visibility for the organization's cause. Typically, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of certain products is donated to the cause. For example, Yoplait yogurt's Save Lids to Save Lives campaign urges consumers to buy pink-lidded cups of yogurt and mail the lids back. For each lid mailed in, Yoplait donates 10 cents to Susan G. Komen's Race for the Cure, more than $34 million since 1997. While the sponsored event or organization may be nonprofit, sponsorship is not the same as philanthropy. Philanthropy is support of a cause without any commercial incentive. Sponsorship is used to achieve commercial objectives. According to the IEG Sponsorship Report, spending on partnerships in North America grew 4.4 percent to $18.9 billion in 2012. For 2013, a 5.5 percent growth to $19.9 billion was expected in sponsorship spending by North American companies. As we discuss later in this chapter, by far the largest and fastest-growing category in North America continues to be sports sponsorships. Worldwide, spending increased 5.1 percent in 2012 to $51.1 billion. The forecast growth in 2013 was 4.2 percent to $53.3. Significant increases in sponsorships was expected in South America in 2014 in support of the FIFA World Cup (soccer) and the 2016 Summer Olympics, both hosted by Brazil.17

Stating the Media Strategy

A written rationale for the media strategy is an integral part of any media plan. Without one, it's difficult for client and agency management to analyze the logic and consistency of the recommended media schedule. Generally, the strategy statement begins with a brief definition of target audiences (the market element) and the priorities for weighting them. It explains the nature of the message and indicates which media types will be used and why (the media element). It outlines specific reach, frequency, and continuity goals and how they are to be achieved (the methodology element). It provides a budget for each medium (the money element), including the cost of production and any collateral materials. Finally, it states the intended size of message units, and any position or timing considerations (the mechanics element). Once the strategy is delineated, the plan details the tactics to be employed, the subject of the next section.

Types of sponsorship: Entertainment

After sports marketing, the largest area of sponsorship is entertainment, which includes things like concert tours, attractions, and theme parks. For instance, numerous attractions at Disneyland and Disney World are sponsored by major corporations such as GE, AT&T, ARCO, Kodak, and Carnation. In 2012, U.S. companies spent an estimated $1.9 billion on this category.

PRINT MEDIA

All print advertising has several unique elements in common. Compared to television or radio, print advertising has more permanence. Since it stays around for a while, it may be read more than once or passed along to other readers. People also tend to spend more time with print advertising, so it provides an opportunity to present more detailed information and longer explanations.

Network Advertising

An advertiser who underwrites the cost of a program is engaging in sponsorship. In a sole sponsorship, the advertiser is responsible for both the program content and the total cost of production. Sponsorship is so costly that single sponsorships are usually limited to specials. Companies that sponsor programs (AT&T, Xerox, and Hallmark, for example) gain two important advantages. First, the public more readily identifies with the product(s) due to the prestige of sponsoring first-rate entertainment. Second, the sponsor controls the placement and content of its commercials. The commercials can be fit to the program and run any length the sponsor desires so long as they remain within network or station regulations. Most network TV advertising is sold on a participation basis, with several advertisers buying 30- or 60-second segments within a program. This enables them to spread their budgets and avoid long-term commitments to any one program. It also lets smaller advertisers buy a limited amount of time and still get the nationwide coverage they need. Network advertising also has several disadvantages: lack of flexibility, long lead times, inconvenient restrictions, and forced adherence to network standards and practices, not to mention high prices. Costs can run high for a spot.

Nature of the Medium and Mood of the Message

An important influence on the media element of the mix is how well a medium works with the style or mood of the particular message. Advertising messages differ in many ways. Some are simple messages: "Just do it" (Nike). Others make emotional or sensual appeals to people's needs and wants: "The great taste of fruit squared" (Jolly Rancher candies). Many advertisers use a reason-why approach to explain their product's advantages: "Twice the room. Twice the comfort. Twice the value. Embassy Suites. Twice the hotel." Complex messages, such as ads announcing a new product or concept, require more space or time for explanation. Each circumstance affects the media selection as well as the methodology of the media mix. A new or highly complex message may require greater frequency and exposure to be understood and remembered. A dogmatic message like Nike's may require a surge at the beginning, then low frequency and greater reach, plus continuity. Once consumers understand reason-why messages, pulsing advertising exposures at irregular intervals is often sufficient. Emotionally oriented messages are usually more effective when spaced at regular intervals to create enduring feelings about the product. We discuss these scheduling methods further in the next section on media tactics.

Increasing Complexity in Media Buying and Selling

As the process of buying media has become more complex, so has the process of selling media. In the battle for additional sales, many print and broadcast media companies developed "value-added" programs to provide extra benefits. Besides selling space or time, these companies now offer reprints, merchandising services, special sections, event sponsorships, and mailing lists. To get a bigger share of the advertiser's budget, larger media companies bundle the various stations, publications, or properties they own and offer them in integrated combinations as further incentives.

Audience Objectives

Audience objectives define the types of people the advertiser wants to reach. Media planners typically use geodemographic classifications to define their target audiences. In Exhibit 14-4, for example, objectives 1 and 2 suggest that the target audience is food purchasers for large families who live in urban areas. This group might even be narrowed further according to specific income, educational, occupational, or social groupings—any of the segments we discussed in Chapter 4. Media planners rely heavily on secondary research sources, such as Nielsen Media Research, which provide basic demographic characteristics of media audiences. Other sources, such as Mediamark Research, Inc. (MRI), describe media audiences based on purchase tendencies. These syndicated reports give demographic profiles of heavy and light users of various products and help planners define the target audience. The reports also specify which TV programs or magazines heavy and light users watch and read, which helps planners select media with large audiences of heavy users. Planners can then select media vehicles—particular magazines or shows—according to how well they offer an audience that most closely resembles the desired target consumer. Unfortunately, due to cost restraints, some media research is not as specific as marketers would really like. Most radio, TV, newspaper, and outdoor audience reports, for example, are limited to age and gender. So media planners often have to rely on judgment and experience to select the right vehicles.9

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: speechwriting

Because company officials often have to speak at stockholder meetings, conferences, or conventions, PR practitioners often engage in speechwriting. They are also frequently responsible for making all the arrangements for speaking opportunities and developing answers for questions company representatives are likely to be asked. Since public relations people may sometimes represent their employers at special events, press conferences, and interviews, they too should be articulate public speakers.

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS JOB: PR Planning and Research

Because public opinion is so important, the PR person must constantly monitor, measure, and analyze changes in attitudes among a variety of publics. A common form of public relations research is opinion sampling using techniques discussed in Chapter 6: shopping center or phone interviews, focus groups, analysis of incoming mail, and field reports. Some advertisers set up toll-free phone lines and invite consumer feedback. Social media provides PR experts a window into the minds of consumers, especially "influentials," the individuals whose opinions matter a great deal to others (we referred to these individuals as "centers of influence" in earlier chapters). Influentials are easy to spot online—they have large numbers monitoring their tweets, blog postings, or comments. It is no surprise then that the arrival of social media has transformed public relations so dramatically that some now refer to it as "public relations 2.0."10

Types of sponsorship

But controversy often swirls around big sports sponsorships. The most controversial practice is ambush marketing, which is a promotional strategy nonsponsors use to capitalize on the popularity or prestige of an event or property by giving the false impression that they are sponsors. Ambush marketing techniques, like buying up all the billboard space around an athletic stadium, are often employed by the competitors of the property's official sponsor. Budweiser was the official beer of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa and the only beer company permitted to advertise within the stadium grounds. However, 36 women attended the Denmark versus Netherlands match wearing orange minidresses that were provided by Dutch beer brewer, Bavaria. They were ejected from the game. Ironically, the women received a lot of media coverage, informing the world that beautiful girls like Dutch soccer and Dutch beer. Bavaria's UK marketing manager Sean Durkan said, "Brand awareness has definitely increased. There's a lot more activity on Twitter and social media."32

Corporate Identity Advertising

Companies take pride in their logos and corporate signatures. The graphic designs that identify corporate names and products are valuable assets, and companies take great pains to protect their individuality and ownership. How does a company increase consumer awareness or enhance its image? What does a company do when it changes its name, logos, or trademarks, as when it merges with another company? This is the job of corporate identity advertising.

Digital Signage

Digital signs display text and graphic messages much like the big screens in sports stadiums. The signs can transmit commercial messages to retail stores, where shoppers see them. The stores pay nothing for the signs and receive a percentage of the advertising revenue. In Montreal, Alstom (www.telecite.com) used its visual communication network (VCN) technology to install digital display panels on subway cars. Advertisers got a powerful, inexpensive, and flexible medium with a large, captive audience; the transit authority got a modern, self-financed emergency and public information system; and passengers got something to watch while they ride.33 Digital signs can be updated easily or even automatically, based on store traffic, weather conditions, and so on. Some digital signs allow shoppers to interact directly with the information on the screen.

Message-Distribution Objectives

Distribution objectives define where, when, and how often advertising should appear. Objectives 3 through 6 from Exhibit 14-4 represent this type. To answer distribution objectives, a media planner must understand a number of terms, including message weight, reach, frequency, and continuity.

OPTIMIZING REACH, FREQUENCY, AND CONTINUITY: THE ART OF MEDIA PLANNING

Effective Reach One of the problems with reach is that, by itself, the measurement doesn't take into account the effectiveness of the exposures. Some people exposed to the vehicle still won't be aware of the message. So, on the surface, reach doesn't seem to be the best measure of media success. Media people use the term effective reach to Page 349 describe the quality of exposure. It measures the percentage of the audience who receive enough exposures to truly notice the message. That brings us to effective frequency. Effective Frequency Similar to the concept of effective reach is effective frequency, defined as the average number of times a person must see or hear a message before it becomes effective. In theory, effective frequency falls somewhere between a minimum level that achieves message awareness and a maximum level that becomes overexposure, which leads to wearout (starts to irritate consumers). The S-shaped advertising response curve in Exhibit 14-9 suggests that at a low frequency there is little response. This is because the intensity of advertising is below a threshold where most of the target audience would notice it. Once that threshold is crossed, there is a dramatic response to increasing levels of advertising. Eventually though, the target market becomes saturated and, while advertising frequency continues to increase, the market response levels off or may even decline. The challenge to media planners is to determine the frequency of advertising that will exceed threshold A but remain below threshold B. To complicate matters further, different products or different advertising campaigns may generate different advertising response curves.

Developing the Offer (step in direct mail)

Every direct-mail package should contain an offer. The offer is the incentive or reward that motivates prospects to respond to a mailing, either with an order or with a request for more information. To be effective, an offer must be clear and specific, it must offer value to the potential customer, it must be believable, and it must be easy to acquire. The more difficult it is for prospects to respond to an offer, the lower the response rate will be. The direct-mail package should provide clear instructions, a conspicuous address (mailing and Internet), and a toll-free phone number. The offer should promote a benefit that will address a prospect's needs. It should clearly explain why this mail is being sent to this prospect at this time. In other words, there should be a call to action: What does the advertiser want the recipient to do when he or she receives the mail? And finally, it should give the prospect a reason to act NOW.

Public Relations Tools: Audiovisual Materials

Films and slide shows are forms of audiovisual materials that may be used for training, sales, or public relations. Considered a form of corporate advertising, nontheatrical or sponsored films (developed for public relations reasons) are often furnished without charge to movie theaters, organizations, and special groups, particularly schools and colleges. Classic examples include Why Man Creates, produced for Kaiser Aluminum, and Mobil Oil's A Fable, starring the famous French mime Marcel Marceau. Many PR departments provide video news releases (VNRs)—news or feature stories prepared by a company and offered free to TV stations, which may use the whole video or just segments. Video news releases are somewhat controversial. Critics see them as subtle commercials or even propaganda and object when stations run the stories without disclosing that they came from a public relations firm, not the station's news staff.

Buyer Purchase Patterns

Finally, the customer's product purchasing behavior affects every element of the media mix. The media planner must consider how, when, and where the product is typically purchased and repurchased. Products with short purchase cycles (convenience foods and paper towels) require more constant levels of advertising than products purchased infrequently (refrigerators and notebook computers).

Increasing Fragmentation of the Audience

Further evidence of the maturing marketplace is the fragmentation of the media audience. This also complicates the media planner's job. Readers and viewers have scattered across the new media options, selectively reading only parts of magazines or newspapers, watching only segments of programs, and listening to many different radio stations. This makes it very difficult to find the prospect. Consumers spend an average of 12 hours per day with media—but an increasing proportion of that time is spent with less traditional media vehicles.5

Corporate/Institutional Advertising

In recent years, the term corporate advertising has come to denote a particular type of nonproduct advertising aimed at increasing awareness of the company and enhancing its image. The traditional term for this is institutional advertising. These ad campaigns may serve a variety of purposes: to report company accomplishments, position the company competitively in the market, reflect a change in corporate personality, shore up stock prices, improve employee morale, or avoid communications problems with agents, dealers, suppliers, or customers. A variation on corporate advertising is advocacy advertising. Companies use it to communicate their views on issues that affect their business, to promote their philosophy, or to make a political or social statement. Such ads are frequently referred to as advertorials since they are basically editorials paid for by an advertiser. Corporate advertising can also build a foundation for future sales, traditionally the realm of product advertising. Many advertisers use umbrella advertising campaigns to Page 413 simultaneously communicate messages about their products and their company. While corporate advertising is an excellent vehicle for promoting the company's desired image, it cannot succeed if the image doesn't fit. If a big national bank, for example, tried to project a homey, small-town image, it would not be very credible.

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: Social Media

It used to be that a PR professional would have to know a score of people from each industry; nowadays that number is exponentially bigger. However, with the bad comes the good, and the clarity that comes from social media allows PR professionals to stay on top of any trends and deal with them before they become brand epidemics. With a good social media strategy, PR professionals can help get influential people to showcase their client's products as they launch, keeping early adopters and loyalists abreast of new developments before the advertising hits.

Drawbacks of Sponsorship

Like all marketing communications tools, sponsorship has some drawbacks. First, it can be very costly, especially when the event is solely sponsored. For this reason, most companies participate in co-sponsored events, which spreads the cost among several participants. The problem with co-sponsored events is clutter. Some events have so many sponsors that getting one marketer's message through is extremely difficult. Look again at stock-car racing. How many logos do those cars sport? Finally, evaluating the effectiveness of a particular sponsorship can be tricky at best—especially since it rarely happens in a vacuum. The problem is in separating the effects of a sponsorship from the effects of other concurrent marketing activities. We'll deal with these issues shortly.

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: Corporate Blogs

Maintaining and managing a corporate blog can help address important concerns, introduce new products or services, and maintain a dialogue between a company and its publics. My Ad Campaign 16-A, "Corporate Blogging," provides some guidelines for using this public relations activity. Most corporations have guidelines for blogging. Here is a set of marketing-related guidelines that every corporation should think about if it intends on using blogging for a marketing tool: Know the environment. What are people saying about you and your products? Venture out into the Web and see what happens when you type your company name into Google or visit popular blogs that deal with your company's product category. Determine what you hope to accomplish. What is your purpose? Why have you started the blog? To address rumors? Share company news? Inform customers about new products? Develop a corporate personality? Having clear objectives will make decisions about what and when to blog much easier. Practice, practice, practice. Do a trial run. Blogging is time-consuming, sometimes difficult, and a different kind of activity for many organizations. Smart companies generate initial blog posts internally until it is clear that the tactic will be useful and rewarding. Remember that it's a two-way street. Learn to share control. Blogs without comments have minimal value, but with comments comes criticism. Smart companies value input from critics at their blogs because it offers them an opportunity to respond and educate. Live up to the commitment. Attention to blogs withers if postings aren't regular. Offer value. Providing information that publics can't find elsewhere gives people a reason to visit your blog or subscribe to feeds. Ask if you have readers. Is your public suitable for blogging? Not every market contains people who read blogs. If yours doesn't, you're wasting time and resources. Search for other blogs related to your industry or product and locate secondary information on your target market's use of the Web to find out whether your blog might make a difference. Avoid hype and puffery. The online community has a different personality than that of people who rely on traditional media. Web users are suspicious of hype and can be critical when they sense they are being preached to or misled. Monitor the one place everyone visits—its name is Wikipedia. If your company or product is mentioned there it is important to monitor, and occasionally correct, what is posted. Use blogging as one piece of the puzzle. Blogging can be an effective way to reach and respond to your publics. But it is rarely a stand-alone tactic. Smart companies make it a part of their overall IMC and public relations plans.

Factors in the Media Strategy: The Five Ms

Many factors go into developing an effective media strategy. For simplicity and ease of memory, we have sorted them into five categories and given them the alliterative moniker of the five Ms: markets, money, media, mechanics, and methodology. Markets refers to the various targets of a media plan: trade and consumer audiences; global, national, or regional audiences; ethnic and socioeconomic groups; or other stakeholders. In an integrated marketing communications plan, the media planner wants to understand the reasons and motivations for the prospect's purchase and usage patterns and then create a media plan based on those findings.15 Using intuition, experience, marketing savvy, and analytical skill, the media planner determines the second element, money—how much to budget and where to allocate it. How much for print media, how much in TV, how much to nontraditional or supplemental media, how much to each geographic area? Media includes all communications vehicles available to a marketer—anything you can put your name on. This includes radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, outdoor, the Internet, and direct mail, plus sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations activities and publicity, special events, brochures, and even shopping bags. Good media planners champion the integration of all marketing communications to help achieve their companies' marketing and advertising objectives. They look at the media element both analytically and creatively. The media planner also has to deal with the complex mechanics of advertising media and messages. Radio and TV commercials come in a variety of time units, and print ads are created in a variety of sizes and styles. The myriad media options now available offer exciting, creative ways to enhance consumer acceptance of the advertiser's message and offer the consumer a relevant purchase incentive. The methodology element refers to the overall strategy of selecting and scheduling media vehicles to achieve the desired message weight, reach, frequency, and continuity objectives. It offers the opportunity for creativity in planning, negotiating, and buying.

The Difference between Advertising and Public Relations

Many public relations communications, like publicity, are not openly sponsored or paid for. People receive these communications in the form of news articles, editorial interviews, or feature stories after the messages have been reviewed and edited—filtered—by the media. Since the public thinks such messages are coming from the media rather than a company, it trusts them more readily. For building credibility, therefore, public relations is usually the better approach. Netflix, for example, benefited heavily from favorable press reviews during its heady growth years. However, while advertising is carefully placed to gain particular reach and frequency objectives, PR is less precise. Public relations objectives are not as easy to quantify. In fact, the results gained from public relations activities depend greatly on the experience and skill of the people executing them and the relationship they have with the press. But PR can go only so far. Editors won't run the same story over and over. An ad's memorability, however, comes from repetition. While PR activities may offer greater credibility, advertising offers precision and control.

Public Relations Tools: Feature articles

Many publications, especially trade journals, run feature articles (soft news) about companies, products, or services. They may be written by a PR person, the publication's staff, or a third party (such as a freelance business writer). As an MPR tool, feature articles can give the company or product great credibility. Editors like them because they have no immediate deadline and can be published at the editor's convenience or when space is available.

Factors That Influence Media Strategy Decisions

Media decisions are greatly influenced by some factors over which the media planner has little or no control. These include the scope of the media plan, sales potential of different markets, competitive strategies and budget considerations, availability of different media vehicles, nature of the medium, mood of the message, message size and length, and buyer purchase patterns.

DEFINING MEDIA OBJECTIVES

Media objectives translate the advertising strategy into goals. Exhibit 14-4 shows general media objectives for a hypothetical new food product. They explain who the target audience is and why, where messages will be delivered and when, and how much advertising weight needs to be delivered over what period of time. EXHIBIT 14-4 How media objectives are expressed. ACME Advertising Client: Econo Foods Product/Brand: Chirpee's Cheap Chips Project: Media plan, first year introduction Media Objectives To target large families with emphasis on the family's food purchaser. To concentrate the greatest weight of advertising in urban areas where prepared foods traditionally have greater sales and where new ideas normally gain quicker acceptance. To provide extra weight during the introductory period and then continuity throughout the year with a fairly consistent level of advertising impressions. To deliver advertising impressions to every region in relation to regional food store sales. To use media that will reinforce the copy strategy's emphasis on convenience, ease of preparation, taste, and economy. To attain the highest advertising frequency possible once the need for broad coverage and the demands of the copy platform have been met. Media objectives have two major components: audience objectives and message-distribution objectives. In this section we outline traditional media objectives, which still apply today to broadcast, print, and outdoor media. Later in this section we highlight ways that objectives on the Web, particularly in social media, may diverge from those of traditional media.

Continuity

Media planners refer to the duration of an advertising message or campaign over a given period of time as continuity. Few companies spread their marketing efforts evenly throughout the year. They typically heavy up before prime selling seasons and slow down during the off-season. Likewise, to save money, a media planner for a new product might decide that after a heavy introductory period of, say, four weeks, a radio campaign needs to maintain continuity for an additional 16 weeks but on fewer stations. We'll discuss some common scheduling patterns in the section on media tactics. While frequency is important to create memory, continuity is important to sustain it. Moreover, as people come into and out of the market for goods and services every day, continuity provides a means of having the message there when it's most needed. Ads that can be scheduled to hit targets when they are ready to make a purchase are more effective and require less frequency.14

Benefits of Sponsorship

More than almost any other marketing communications tool, sponsorships and events have the ability to involve customers, prospects, and other stakeholders. Events are also highly self-selective of their target audience. So marketers that define their audiences tightly can select just those sponsorships that offer the closest fit. A significant benefit is the opportunity to enhance the company's public image or merchandise its positioning through affiliation with an appropriate event. Marketers that sponsor an event simply because it has a large audience are misusing this tool.19 Unlike advertising, sponsorships and events can provide face-to-face access to current and potential customers. Depending on the venue, this access can be relatively clean and uncluttered by competition. Sponsoring a seminar, for instance, creates an opportunity for both customer education and brand involvement. In some cases, it even enables product demonstrations and the opportunity to give a personal sales pitch to multiple prospects at a time when they are open Page 407 to new information.20 This is especially good for business-to-business marketers.

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS JOB: Crisis communications management

One of the most important public relations tasks for any corporation is crisis management. Brand value can be quickly destroyed if "damage control" is not swift and thorough. For example, Martha Stewart's profitable marketing persona quickly became a liability in 2002, when her involvement in an insider-trading scheme surfaced. (She was later tried and sentenced to a prison term.) Even though her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, immediately took steps to distance itself from its founder's legal troubles by removing her name from some products and publications, its stock value and revenues both dropped by more than 30 percent between 2003 and 2004.12

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS JOB: Reputation Management

One of the principal tasks of public relations is to manage the standing of the firm with various publics. Reputation management is the name of this long-term strategic process.11 PR practitioners employ a number of strategies and tactics to help them manage their firm's or client's reputation, including publicity and press agentry, crisis communications management, and community involvement. Page 398 Publicity and Press Agentry Many public relations professionals focus primarily on generating news and placing it in the media for their companies or clients. A major activity of public relations, publicity is the generation of news about a person, product, or service that appears in print or electronic media. Companies employ this activity either for marketing purposes or to enhance the firm's reputation. The planning and staging of events to generate publicity is called press agentry. Press agentry helps to bring attention to new products or services or to portray their organizations favorably. For print media, the publicity person deals with editors and feature writers. For broadcast media, he or she deals with program directors, assignment editors, or news editors. Successful PR practitioners develop and maintain close, cordial relations with their editorial contacts. An MPR professional practicing IMC sees the press as an important public, and writers and editors as important stakeholders.

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: Public Affairs and Lobbying

Organizations often need to deal with elected officials, regulatory and legislative bodies, and various community groups—the realm of public affairs. Page 400 Public affairs usually requires a specialist. Many experts think PR and public affairs should become more integrated to combine the skills and policy expertise of the specialist with the PR person's media and community relations savvy. Lobbying refers to informing government officials and persuading them to support or thwart administrative action or legislation in the interests of some client. Every organization is affected by the government, so lobbying is big business.

Public Relations Tools: Photos

Photos of events, products in use, new equipment, or newly promoted executives can lend credence or interest to a dull news story. In fact, a photo tells the story faster. Photos should be high quality and need little or no explanation. Typed captions should describe the photo and accurately identify the people shown.

Public Relations Tools: Posters, Exhibits, and Bulletin Boards

Posters can be used internally to stress safety, security, reduction of waste, and courtesy. Externally, they can impart product information, corporate philosophy, or other news of interest to consumers. Companies use exhibits to describe the organization's history, present new products, show how products are made, or explain future plans. Exhibits are often prepared for local fairs, colleges and universities, and trade shows. Internally, the public relations staff often uses bulletin boards to announce new equipment, new products, meetings, promotions, construction plans, and recreation news to employees. Many companies now maintain an intranet site where they can post their internal communications.

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES: Publications

Public relations people prepare many of a company's communications materials: news releases and media kits; booklets, leaflets, pamphlets, brochures, manuals, and books; letters, inserts, and enclosures; annual reports; posters, bulletin boards, and exhibits; audiovisual materials; and position papers. It's important that these materials are also accessible in an online newsroom. Here again, PR people may work with Page 401 the advertising department or the agency to produce these materials. The advertising people need to keep the company's overall positioning strategy in mind while trying to help accomplish the particular PR objectives.

House lists

The company's database of current, recent, and long-past customers as well as identified prospects comprises the house list for direct-mail programs. Because customers are its most important asset, every company should focus sufficient resources on developing a rich database of customer and prospect information and profiles. There are several ways a company can build its own house list.

Creating, Producing, and Distributing the Package (step in direct mail)

The direct-mail piece normally goes through the same production process as any other print piece. The size and shape of the mailing package, as well as the type, illustrations, and colors, all affect printing costs. Special features such as simulated blue-ink signatures, cardboard pop-ups, and die-cutting (the cutting of paper stock into an unusual shape) add to the cost. But the larger the printing volume, or run, the lower the printing cost per unit. Remaining production and handling tasks can be done by a local letter shop (or mailing house), or the advertiser can do them internally. On a cost-per-thousand basis, letter shops stuff Page 334 and seal envelopes, affix labels, calculate postage, and sort, tie, and stack the mailers. Some shops also offer creative services. If the advertiser is using third-class bulk mail, the letter shop separates mailers by zip code and ties them into bundles to qualify for low bulk rates. Then the letter shop delivers the mailers to the post office.

Increasing Competition

The final element making media planning more challenging is the competitive environment, which in just a few years has completely changed the structure of the advertising business. In the 1990s, as clients sought greater efficiency with their media dollars, independent media buying services came into the fore, attracting some of the best and brightest talent in the business to compete with agencies for what was once their private domain. Initially, the independents bought advertising at lower bulk rates and then sold it for a commission to advertisers or agencies lacking a fully staffed media department. As the media specialists grew, though, clients came to realize the virtues of scale, and financial clout emerged as a potent weapon in negotiating media buys.8

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS JOB: Community Involvement

The goal of community involvement is to develop a dialogue between the company and the community.13 This is best done by having company officers, management, and employees contribute to the community's social and economic development. Every community offers opportunities for corporate involvement: civic and youth groups, charitable fundraising drives, cultural or recreational activities, and so on. A company should ideally adopt one program relevant to its expertise and focus its mission marketing activities. The PR department may help set up such programs and publicize them to the community.

Scope of the Media Plan

The location and makeup of the target audience strongly influence the scope of the media plan, thereby affecting decisions regarding the market, the money, and the media elements. Domestic markets A media planner normally limits advertising to areas where the product is available. If a store serves only one town, or if a city has been chosen to test-market a new product, then the advertiser will use a local plan. A regional plan may cover several adjoining metropolitan areas, an entire state or province, or several neighboring states. Regional plans typically employ a combination of local media, regional editions of national magazines, spot TV and radio, and the Internet. Advertisers who want to reach several regions or an entire country use a national plan. This may call for network TV and radio, full-circulation national magazines and newspapers, nationally syndicated Sunday newspaper supplements, and the Web.

Sales Potential of Different Markets

The market and money elements of the media mix also depend on the sales potential of each area. National advertisers use this factor to Page 351 determine where to allocate their advertising dollars. Planners can determine an area's sales potential in several ways. The brand development index The brand development index (BDI) indicates the sales strength of a particular brand in a specific market area. It compares the percentage of the brand's total U.S. sales in an area to the percentage of the total U.S. population in that area. The larger the brand's sales relative to the area's percentage of U.S. population, the higher the BDI and the greater the brand's sales development. BDI is calculated as BDI=Percentage of the brand's total U.S. sales in the areaPercentage of total U.S. population in the area×100 Suppose sales of a brand in Los Angeles are 1.58 percent of the brand's total U.S. sales and the population of Los Angeles is 2 percent of the U.S. total. The BDI for Los Angeles is BDI=1.582×100=79 An index number of 100 means the brand's performance is in balance with the size of the area's population. A BDI index number below 100 indicates poor development of the brand in that market. Conversely, a BDI greater than 100 indicates better than average development. The category development index To determine the strength of the whole product category, media planners use the category development index (CDI), which works on the same principle as the BDI and is calculated in much the same way: CDI=Percentage of the product category's total U.S. sales in the areaPercentage of total U.S. population in the area×100 If category sales in Los Angeles are 4.92 percent of total U.S. category sales, the CDI in Los Angeles is CDI=4.922×100=246 The combination of BDI and CDI can help the planner determine a media strategy for the market (see Exhibit 14-10). In our example, a low BDI (under 100) and a high CDI (over 100) in Los Angeles indicate that the product category offers great potential but the brand is not selling well (low market share). This may represent a problem or an opportunity. If the brand has been on the market for some time, the low BDI raises a red flag; some problem is standing in the way of brand sales. But if the brand is new, the low BDI may be a positive sign. The high CDI may indicate the brand can grow substantially, given more time and greater media and marketing support. At this point, the media planner should assess the company's share of voice (discussed in Chapter 7) and budget accordingly.

Mobile Billboards

The mobile billboard, a cross between traditional billboards and transit advertising, was conceived as advertising on the sides of tractor-trailer trucks. Today in some large cities, specially designed trucks carry long billboards up and down busy thoroughfares. Local routes for mobile ads are available on delivery trucks in several cities. And, of course, many of these mobile billboards are going digital. Speaking of digital, a San Francisco company called Smart Plate has developed a license plate that can display custom advertising messages if your car is halted for more than four seconds in traffic or at a red light. California is evaluating this idea as a way to generate revenue for the state. The plates could also be used to update vehicle registration, pay tolls, and broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information.32

Compiled lists

The most readily available lists are those that some entity compiles for a different reason and then rents or sells—for example, lists of car owners, new-home purchasers, business owners, and so on. Compiled lists typically offer the lowest response rate, so experts suggest using numerous sources, merging them on computer with mail-response and house lists, and then purging them of duplicate names. The average mailing list changes more than 40 percent a year as people relocate, change jobs, get married, or die. So mailing lists must be continually updated (cleaned) to be sure they're current and correct. Advertisers can also test the validity and accuracy of a given list. They rent or buy every nth name and send a mailer to that person. If the results are favorable, they purchase additional names, usually in lots of 1,000.

Message Size, Length, and Position Considerations

The particular characteristics of different media affect the mechanics element of the media mix. For example, in print, a full-page ad attracts more attention than a quarter-page ad and a full-color ad more than a black-and-white one. Should a small advertiser run a full-page ad once a month or a quarter-page ad once a week? Is it better to use a few 60-second commercials or many 15- and 30-second ones? The planner has to consider the nature of the advertising message; some simply require more time and space to explain. Competitive activity often dictates more message units. The product itself may demand the prestige of a full-page or full-color ad. However, it's often better to run small ads consistently rather than one large Page 353 ad occasionally. Unfortunately, space and time units may be determined by someone other than the media planner—creative or account management, for example—in which case the planner's options are limited. The position of an ad is another consideration. Preferred positions for magazine ads are front and back covers; for TV, sponsorship of prime-time shows. Special positions and sponsorships cost more, so the media planner must decide whether the increased audience is worth the higher costs. As we can see, the nature of the creative work has the potential to greatly affect the media strategy. This means that media planners have to be flexible, since the initial media plan may well have been determined prior to beginning the creative work.

THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

The primary role of public relations is to manage a company's reputation and help build public support for its activities. Today's business environment has become so competitive that public approval can no longer be assumed; it must be earned continuously.2 The term public relations is widely misunderstood and misused. Part of the confusion is due to the fact that public relations covers a very broad range of activities. Depending on the context and one's point of view, it can be a concept, a profession, a management function, or a practice. For our purposes, we define public relations (PR) as the strategic management of the relationships and communications that individuals and organizations have with other groups for the purpose of creating mutual goodwill. As we've already discussed, every company, organization, or government body has relationships with groups of people who are affected by what it does or says. They may be employees, customers, stockholders, competitors, suppliers, legislators, or the community in which the organization resides. Marketing professionals refer to these people as stakeholders because they all have some vested interest in the company's actions. In PR terminology, each of these groups is considered one of the organization's publics, and the goal of PR is to develop and maintain goodwill with most, if not all, of its publics. Failure to do so may mean loss of customers and revenues, time lost dealing with complaints or lawsuits, and loss of respect (which weakens the organization's brand equity as well as its ability to secure financing, make sales, and expand business).

MEDIA PLANNING: INTEGRATING SCIENCE WITH CREATIVITY IN ADVERTISING

The purpose of media planning is to conceive, analyze, and creatively select channels of communication that will direct advertising messages to the right people in the right place at the right time. The Media Edge believes that "anything you put your message on is media." That includes shopping bags, book covers, and parking meters. As a result, media planning today involves many decisions. For example, Where should we advertise? (In what countries, states, or parts of town?) Which media vehicles reach and engage our target markets? When during the year should we concentrate our advertising? How often should we run the advertising? What opportunities exist for integrating our advertising with other communication tools? The media department gained new prominence in the 1990s when clients started taking an à la carte approach to agency services, and agencies began competing for media planning assignments.

Increasing Media Options

The reason for this decline is that TV is now fragmented into network, syndicated, spot, and local television, as well as network and local cable. Also nipping at ratings are on-demand services such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Apple TV. Specialized magazines now aim at every population and business segment. Even national magazines publish editions for particular regions or demographic groups. Finally, the incredible growth of the Web and social media has brought a host of new options. But it has also added to the complexity of media work as planners face the challenge of staying current with the constantly expanding technology and mastering a whole new vocabulary. Nontraditional media—which can include mobile media, apps, cinema advertising, and product placement—also expand the menu of choices. In addition, many companies spend a considerable portion of their marketing budgets on specialized communications like direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations activities, and personal selling, topics we'll discuss in the next two chapters (see Exhibit 14-1). In fact, these Page 341 "below-the-line" (noncommissionable) activities are the fastest-growing segments at some of the large agency holding companies, like WPP and Interpublic.

Audience Accumulation and Reach

The term reach refers to the total number of different people exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period of time, usually four weeks.12 For example, if 40 percent of 100,000 people in a target market tune in to radio station WKKO at least once during a four-week period, the reach is 40,000 people. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the vehicle and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. An advertiser may accumulate reach in two ways: by using the same media vehicle repeatedly or by combining two or more media vehicles.13 Naturally, as more media are used, some duplication occurs. Exhibit 14-7 is a statistical table that estimates how reach builds as additional media are added. To see how it works, locate the column for the first vehicle showing a reach of 60. Then locate the row for vehicle 2 showing a reach of 35. The number at their intersection is 74. But 35 added to 60 is 95. Why has reach increased to only 74? The answer is the two vehicles share some of their users. The greater the overlap of the audiences for two vehicles, the less using those vehicles in a campaign will grow reach. And if the audience for two vehicles is identical, reach cannot grow at all.

COMPONENTS OF DIRECT-MAIL ADVERTISING

The three basic components of direct-mail advertising are the mailing list, the offer, and the creative package. Direct-mail experts say the mailing list is responsible for up to 60 percent of the success of a mailing. The offer is good for 25 percent of a mailing's success and the creative package is worth 15 percent. Many advertisers focus too much time and money developing the creative side of a mailing but give insufficient attention to the actual lists.

The Role of Media in the Marketing Framework

The top-down marketing plan defines the market need and the company's sales objectives and details strategies for attaining those objectives. Exhibit 14-3 shows how objectives and strategies of a marketing plan result from the marketing situation (or SWOT) analysis, which defines the company's strengths and weaknesses and uncovers any marketplace opportunities and threats. The objectives and strategies of an advertising plan unfold from the marketing plan. But advertising objectives focus on communication goals. Media objectives and strategies flow from the advertising plan. They determine how the communications goals will be accomplished through the selection of media. The media department's job is to make sure the advertising message (developed by the creative department) gets to the correct target audience (established by the marketing managers and account executives) in an effective manner (as measured by the research department).

How People Access Digital Media

This is all made possible through high-speed connections, both wired and wireless. According to one study, 91 percent of the 18-and-over online population has broadband Internet access, making it the main connection type to the Internet. Broadband connections are really just a description of the ability to transmit multiple signals simultaneously on one data line. For consumers it means faster web access and quicker data uploads and downloads.

Public Relations Advertising

To direct a controlled public relations message to one of its important publics, a company uses public relations advertising. PR ads may be used to improve the company's relations with labor, government, customers, suppliers, and even voters. When companies sponsor art events, programs on public television, or charitable activities, they frequently place public relations ads in other media to promote the programs and their sponsorship, enhance their community citizenship, and create public goodwill. If the public relations people don't have advertising experience, they will typically turn to the firm's advertising department or agency for help.

Broadcast TV

Until the advent of the Internet, broadcast television grew faster than any other advertising medium in history. As both a news and entertainment medium, it caught people's fancy very quickly. From its beginnings after World War II, broadcast TV rapidly emerged as the only medium that offered sight, sound, and motion. People could stay home and still go to the movies. As TV's legions of viewers grew, the big national brand advertisers quickly discovered they could use the medium very efficiently to expand distribution across the country and sell products like never before. Large advertisers found that medium was ideal for building an image for their brands—even better than magazines, which had previously been the image-building medium of choice. It didn't take long for marketers to switch their budgets from radio, newspapers, and magazines.

Increasing costs

While there are more media choices, the number of messages that need to be communicated has also grown—so much so, in fact, that they have outstripped the ability of consumers to process them. People can cope with only so many messages, so media restrict the number of ads they sell. As a result, the costs are increasing for almost all media. In the last decade, the cost of exposing 1,000 people to each of the major media (cost per thousand) rose faster than inflation. Shows that can deliver a big audience are sold at a premium. To take one example, consider Exhibit 14-2, which tracks statistics for the "average" network TV show from 1965 through 2013. The number of households watching the average show has been in steady decline since the early 1980s. But the cost of a 30-second ad for that show has held steady, resulting in a much higher cost per household. The cost of an average TV ad? Well over $100,000.6 Rising costs make media planning more challenging than ever, especially for advertisers with small budgets. Clients want proof that planners are squeezing the most they can out of every media dollar.

ATMs

With so many thousands of money devices in service, it's only natural that the captive audience of automated teller machines (ATMs) be targeted for creative promotional tactics. Fleet Financial Group has capitalized on ATM technology by printing retailer coupons on the backs of receipts, the other piece of paper that customers receive from the machines. The coupons, which were initially redeemable at Bruegger's Bagels, Firestone, Great Cuts, Oil Doctor, and Pizza Hut, originated in Massachusetts and provided advertising that customers were likely to carry around in their wallets or cars. Page 327 One ATM innovation, developed by Electronic Data Systems Corp., puts full motion video ads on the machine's screen as customers wait for their transactions to be processed. The 15-second ads, which debuted in 7-Eleven stores in San Diego, replace the "Transaction being processed" or "Please wait" messages that appeared on the screen. The original ads promoted Fox Searchlight Pictures's films The Ice Storm and The Full Monty.

Advertising and PR in the Eyes of Practitioners

s. Advertising professionals see marketing as the umbrella process companies use to determine what products and services the market needs and how to distribute and sell them. To advertising professionals, advertising and public relations are marketing tools used to promote sales. Public relations professionals take a different view. With a background often in journalism rather than marketing, they believe public relations should be the umbrella process. They think companies should use PR to maintain relationships with all publics, including consumers. As Inside PR magazine says, "Public relations is a management discipline that encompasses a wide range of activities, from marketing and advertising to investor relations and government affairs." When PR activities are used for marketing purposes, the term marketing public relations (MPR) is often used. In support of marketing, public relations activities can raise awareness, inform and educate, improve understanding, build trust, make friends, give people reasons or permission to buy, and create a climate of consumer acceptance—usually better than advertising.8 Marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries believe the best way to build a Page 397 brand is through publicity—a PR activity. They cite numerous examples of leading companies that achieved their cachet with relatively little advertising but extensive publicity: Starbucks, The Body Shop, and Walmart, to name a few.9 In an integrated marketing communications program, advertising and MPR need to be closely coordinated. Many ad agencies now have PR departments or affiliate with public relations firms. Exhibit 16-1 shows some of the PR industry's largest firms and their billings. And many companies now have communications departments that manage both advertising and PR.

Sponsorships and Added-Value Packages

A form of advertising on the Internet that is growing in popularity is the sponsorship of digital content. Corporations sponsor entire sections of a publisher's web page or sponsor single events for a limited period of time, usually calculated in months. In exchange for sponsorship support, companies are given extensive recognition on the site. Sometimes an added-value package is created by integrating the sponsor's brand with the publisher's content, as a sort of advertorial, or with banners and buttons on the page.

How Magazines are categorized: Geography

A magazine may also be classified as local, regional, or national. Today, most major U.S. cities have a local city magazine: San Diego Magazine, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Palm Springs Life. Their readership is usually upscale business and professional people interested in local arts, fashion, and business. Regional publications are targeted to a specific area of the country, such as the West or the South: Sunset, Southern Living. National magazines sometimes provide special market runs Page 247 for specific geographic regions. Time, Woman's Day, and Sports Illustrated allow advertisers to buy a single major market. Exhibit 10-3 shows the 10 major geographic editions of Reader's Digest. This is important for local or regional advertisers who want the benefit of advertising in larger, more well-known publications while staying geographically relevant to the audience that may be reading the magazine. Magazines that cater to specific geographic areas are considered local or regional publications. Sunset magazine focuses its distribution in 13 western states, offering its readers information relevant to western climates, lifestyles, architecture, and food preferences. Marketers can target even more precisely by advertising in Sunset's regional or metro editions. Advertisers benefit from selecting regional editions similar to the 10 geographic editions of Reader's Digest shown on the map. With regional binding and mailing, advertisers can buy ad space for only the areas of distribution they need. National magazines range from those with enormous circulations, such as TV Guide, to small, lesser-known national magazines, such as Nature and Volleyball.

Magazine circulation: Guaranteed versus Delivered Circulation

A magazine's rates are largely based on its circulation. The rate base is the circulation figure on which the publisher bases its rates. It is generally equivalent to the guaranteed circulation, the minimum number of copies the publisher expects to circulate. This assures advertisers they will reach a certain number of people. If the publisher does not deliver its guaranteed figure, it must provide a refund. For that reason, guaranteed circulation figures are often stated safely below the average actual circulation. Media buyers expect publications to verify their circulation figures. Publishers pay thousands of dollars each year for a circulation audit—a thorough analysis of the circulation procedures, outlets of distribution, readers, and other factors—by companies such as the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).

Print ad Rates

As we will discuss in Chapter 14, one way to compare magazines is to look at how much it costs to reach a thousand people based on the magazine's rates for a one-time, full-page ad. You compute the cost per thousand (CPM) by dividing the full-page rate by the number of thousands of subscribers: Page rate(Circulation÷1,000)=CPM For example, if the magazine's black-and-white page rate is $10,000, and the publication has a circulation of 500,000, then: $10,000(500,000÷1,000)=$10,000500=$20 CPM Consider this comparison. In 2013, the page rate for a full-color, one-page ad in Car & Driver was $206,464 on a total circulation of 1,206,360; Road & Track offered the same ad for Page 252 $113,734 on a total circulation of 603,990. Which was the better buy on a CPM basis?

E-Mail Advertising

According to Forbes's "2009 Ad Effectivness Study," 74 percent of marketers send e-mail advertising to customers who have asked for it. Marketers have always known that direct-mail advertising is the most effective medium for generating inquiries and leads and for closing a sale. It's also been the most expensive medium on a cost-per-exposure basis. Now, thanks to the Internet, the power of direct mail is increased even more, and the cost is reduced dramatically.16 It's important to differentiate responsible e-mail advertising from spam, which is electronic junk mail. Spam generally refers to unsolicited, mass e-mail advertising for a product or service that is sent by an unknown entity to a purchased mailing list or newsgroup. Spammers face the wrath of frustrated customers, tired of having their inboxes filled with unwanted e-mails. Since January 2004, spammers also face litigation under the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing). Legitimate e-mail advertisers are required to (1) clearly mark the e-mail as advertising, (2) provide a valid reply-to e-mail address, and (3) allow recipients to opt out of future mailings. The first lawsuits under the act were filed in April 2004, against two companies that had sent nearly a million e-mails advertising bogus diet patches and growth hormones. Lawsuits have also been filed against companies that sent e-mails that falsely appeared to come from recipients' friends17 or with misleading subject lines.18 With this in mind, wary marketers are focusing their e-mail efforts on customer retention and relationship management (CRM) rather than on prospecting.

Dayparts

Advertisers must decide when to air commercials and on which programs. Programs continue to run or are canceled depending on their ratings (percentage of the population watching). Ratings also vary with the time of day a program runs. Television time is divided into dayparts roughly as follows: Early morning: 6:00-9:00 a.m. (Eastern and Pacific) Daytime: 9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Early fringe: 4:30-7:30 p.m. Prime access: 7:30-8:00 p.m. Prime time: 8:00-11:00 p.m. Late news: 11:00-11:30 p.m. Late night: 11:30 p.m.-2:00 a.m. Viewing is highest during prime time (8 to 11 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time; 7 to 10 p.m. Central and Mountain Time). Late fringe ranks fairly high in most markets among adults, and daytime and early fringe tend to be viewed most heavily by women. To reach the greatest percentage of the advertiser's target audience with optimal frequency, the media planner determines a daypart mix based on TV usage levels reported by the rating services.

THE EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Advertising-related technologies never stop evolving. They've already given us the personal computer, the mobile phone, the Internet, HDTV, 4k TV, digital media players, Blu-ray, IPTV, VOIP, and iPads—and the software to make it all simple enough for anybody to use.Page 293 Evolving technologies present challenges to advertisers, who are often unsure how to best take advantage of the opportunities they afford. These opportunities may become clear only with time. When mobile phones were first introduced, advertisers thought only in terms of ads on the devices' screens. It turned out that such ads are the tip of the marketing iceberg. For example, a typical teen watching a high school basketball game won't just use his phone to place a call. He'll use it to snap a picture of the star player's Nike shoes, send the photo over Instagram to his dad ("Hey Dad, I have a birthday coming!"), and Snapchat his friends to seek their opinions about the shoes. All of this will be accomplished in a minute or two. Many of these interactions will take place outside of a web browser via smartphone apps. While using digital media, the teen will be exposed to several marketing messages, some of which can easily identify his general location and interests. And he will leave a trail of activities for marketers to ponder.

DIRECT-MAIL ADVERTISING: THE ADDRESSABLE MEDIUM

All forms of advertising sent directly to prospects through a government, private, or electronic mail delivery service are called direct-mail advertising. As we will discuss in Chapter 15, direct-mail advertising is one form of direct marketing since it allows advertisers to communicate directly with the customer. Measured on advertising dollars spent, direct mail is second only to television. This is not all spent by large national direct-mail marketers. Local retail businesses are expected to spend over $11 billion on direct mail in 2013, nearly four times as much as on online advertising. Direct mail is used by for-profit businesses, charities, and political campaigns. Mailings are typically targeted to the advertiser's best prospects, selected based on where they live, demographic characteristics, past purchasing behavior, or interest they have expressed in certain product categories. Direct mail may also be targeted to businesses rather than individuals, in an effort to generate orders or leads for a sales force. Since direct-mail marketers don't want to waste money sending advertising to disinterested prospects, consumers can opt out by contacting the Direct Marketing Association's Mail Preference Service (www.dmachoice.org). Many experts predicted that the combination of the recession, rising postage rates, and a growing preference among marketers for low-cost, digital communications would lead to a steep decline in the dollars spent on direct-mail advertising. Consistent with those predictions, growth was sluggish in 2014.39 Today's leading mailers include the financial services and catalog companies shown in Exhibit 13-5. Direct mail (not including catalogs) can also boast an impressive ROI, returning over $15 for every dollar spent.

Who uses newspapers?

Although the newspaper is the major community-serving medium for both news and advertising, more and more national advertisers are shifting to radio and television. As a result, radio and TV carry most of the national advertising in the United States, while the majority of newspaper advertising revenue comes from local advertising. Retail, cellular phone, and cable companies are the primary advertisers in newspapers.

Digital Interactive Today: mobile advertising

Apple's iPhone has transformed digital advertising in a way not seen since the introduction of the Web. As of 2016, there are now over 200 million smartphone users in the U.S.7 The iPhone has increased data plan usage, or non-voice-related consumption over the carriers' networks. iPhone users are heavy users of video and mobile TV.8 People use their phones to download applications and games, surf the Web, and send multimedia messages. The appeal for advertisers is that the phone is the only truly portable and personally identifiable medium. And Page 297 unlike most other media, when consumers view an ad on their phone that they like, they can buy right away. Large numbers of people already shop on the phone now.9 The other form of advertising and the one that represents the largest inventory is sponsored SMS (short message service). One benefit to marketers who generate these ads is that the end user need not own a smartphone. Almost any mobile device can receive texts. Companies like 4INFO, in the United States, offer news, horoscopes, and sports scores, among other things, for free to users via SMS, and advertisers sponsor these messages. The carriers have set up very strict guidelines in the use of SMS and act as a gatekeeper for all messages that go over their networks in an effort to reduce SMS spam. A smartphone user can respond to an SMS ad, via a link, at a mobile web page.

OUT-OF-HOME ADVERTISING

As a global medium, out-of-home (OOH) advertising has achieved great success. It was probably the first advertising medium ever used, dating back more than 5,000 years to when hieroglyphics on obelisks directed travelers. In the Middle Ages, bill posting was an accepted form of advertising in Europe. And in the nineteenth century, it evolved into an art form, thanks to the poster paintings of Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec.6 Today, from Africa to Asia to Europe to South America, marketers use OOH media for the same reasons as James Ready: to communicate a succinct message or image to a mass audience quickly and frequently at the lowest cost per thousand of any major medium. Growth in OOH is slow compared to newer media. Expenditures increased just 4 percent from 2014 to 2015.7 However, growth is expected to continue to increase as advertisers seek alternatives to the declining audiences and ad clutter of other mass media forms. Now that TV viewers can choose from hundreds of channels, it has become increasingly difficult for national advertisers to tell their story to mass audiences. But there's still one medium that can carry their message 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without interruption. It offers a variety of options.8 It's never turned off, zipped, zapped, put aside, or left unopened. And it's big. That's outdoor. For that reason, some refer to OOH as the last mass medium.9

Location, Location, Location (buying outdoor advertising)

As in real estate, location is everything in outdoor advertising. Advertisers that want more saturation can increase the number of posters or purchase better locations to achieve 200 or 300 GRPs per day. The map in Exhibit 13-3 shows the billboard locations in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that together would total 100 or more GRPs per day. To achieve a 100 showing in Baton Rouge, Lamar Outdoor Advertising would place billboards (see Exhibit 13-3) along all major traffic arteries, facing in both directions. Rates vary considerably from market to market due to variations in property prices, labor costs, and market size. As you would expect, Exhibit 13-4 shows that locations in larger markets with high traffic volume have higher rates. A standard billboard costs between $500 and $1,500 per month. At that rate, billboards still offer the lowest cost per thousand impressions (an average of about $5.00 a 30-sheet poster) of any major mass medium.17 The only other medium that comes close is radio.

Audience Measurements

Audience Measurements Rating services and media planners use many terms to define a station's audience, penetration, and efficiency. TV households (TVHH) refers to the number of households that own television sets. The number of TVHH in a particular market gives an advertiser a sense of the market's size. Likewise, the number of TVHH tuned in to a particular program helps the advertiser estimate the program's popularity and how many people a commercial is likely to reach.Page 281 The percentage of homes in a given area that have one or more TV sets turned on at any particular time is expressed as households using TV (HUT). If there are 1,000 TV sets in the survey area and 500 are turned on, HUT is 50 percent (500/1,000). The program rating refers to the percentage of TV households in an area that are tuned in to a specific program. The rating is computed as follows: Rating=TVHH tuned to a specific programTotal TVHH in area Networks want high ratings because they measure a show's popularity. More popular shows can command higher advertising rates. The percentage of homes with sets in use (HUT) tuned to a specific program is called the audience share. Share=TVHH tuned to a specific programHH with a TV turned on A program with only 500 viewers can have a 50 percent share if only 1,000 sets are turned on. Ratings, in contrast, measure Page 282 the audience as a percentage of all TVHH in the area, whether the TV sets are on or off. The actual number of homes reached by some portion of a program is called total audience. This figure is normally broken down into demographic categories to determine audience composition.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality outdoor uses digital imagery to project 3-D images in public spaces. Still in its infancy, the capabilities of the technology will only grow with time, creating the opportunity for incredible immersive experiences. A great example is shown below in a campaign for National Geographic that brings people fact-to-face with raptors and big cats.

Paid and Controlled Circulation

Business publications may be distributed on either a paid-circulation or controlled-circulation basis. A paid basis means the recipient must pay the subscription price to receive the magazine. Bloomberg Businessweek is a paid-circulation business magazine. In controlled circulation, the publisher mails the magazine free to individuals who the publisher thinks can influence the purchase of advertised products. For example, individuals responsible for packaging their company's products can receive a free subscription to Packaging Digest magazine. To qualify for the subscription list, people must indicate in writing a desire to receive it and must give their professional designation or occupation. Dues-paying members of organizations often get free subscriptions. For example, members of the Boat Owners Association of the United States receive free copies of BoatU.S. Magazine.

Cable TV

But in the 1970s, the advent of satellite TV signals, the proliferation of channels, and the introduction of uncut first-run movies via premium cable channels such as Home Box Office (HBO) and Showtime made cable TV more attractive to all viewers, even people in urban areas. At first, many subscribers valued cable simply for the full array of regional channels and access to premium services such as HBO. But once this novelty wore off, subscribers wanted more. A variety of advertiser-supported cable networks soon appeared with specialized programming in arts, history, sports, news, cooking, and comedy, along with diversified pay services and many more local shows. All of this attracted more and more subscribers—and consequently drew viewers away from the big broadcast networks.

Cinema Advertising

Cinema advertising includes on-screen advertising, such as commercials airing in advance of movie previews and the feature presentation, as well as lobby-based videos, sampling, special events, and concession-based promotions. Although some moviegoing audiences resent watching ads, cinema advertising is becoming more and more attractive to marketers. "Unlike traditional media, we don't have to fight for our audience's attention; they don't flip channels," says Bob Martin, president and chair of the Cinema Advertising Council.30 Cinema advertising grew to a $644 million industry in 2011, up an average of 15.7 percent per year since 2002, an impressive gain compared to the steep drops in print and broadcast. Cinema advertising offers some compelling advantages to marketers. Arbitron estimates that 81 percent of teens and 67 percent of young adults see a movie at least once a month. A full 25 percent of teens see 20 or more movies each year. Arbitron also reports that while those who go to movies, in comparison to non-moviegoers, are more likely to skip ads on TV, most don't mind ads in movies. Moviegoers also tend to be young, affluent, tech-savvy peer leaders. Nonetheless, some movie theater chains prohibit on-screen advertising for fear of offending their audience.

Types of Newspaper Advertising: Classified Advertising

Classified ads provide a community marketplace for goods, services, and opportunities of every type, from real estate and new-car sales to employment and business opportunities. A newspaper's profitability often relies heavily on a large and healthy classified section. Page 256 However, newspapers have been hit hard by the migration of classified ads to websites like Craigslist and Monster.com. Classified rates are typically based on how many lines the ad occupies and how many times the ad runs. Some newspapers accept classified display ads, which run in the classified section of the newspaper but feature larger type and/or photos, art borders, and sometimes even color.

The Promise of Enhanced Tracking

Companies now have some of the most precise tracking and targeting tools ever. In fact, every time you access the Internet, some computer may be tracking where you go. How? Cookies are small text files stored on your computer when you visit certain websites. These cookies can keep track of whether a certain user has ever visited a specific site. This allows the website to give users different information depending on whether they are repeat visitors. Cookies also indicate the users' frequency of visits, the time of last visit, and the domain from which they are surfing. Additionally, cookies give marketers great insights into their campaigns on a daily basis, such as the number of times users call for an ad, time of day, type of browsers they use, whether or not they click, and so on. Typical online marketers employ the services of third-party ad servers. Third-party ad servers deliver ads from one central source, or server, across multiple Web domains, allowing advertisers the ability to manage the rotation and distribution of their advertisements. The best-known companies are DoubleClick, owned by Google, and Atlas DMT, owned by Microsoft. These companies allow advertisers to monitor the performance of their buys on a daily basis all the way down to conversion or sales. By placing a line of code on the last page of the sales process, DoubleClick can match the user back to the last advertisement they saw, via the cookies placed on the user's computer, and credit that advertisement with the sale. This allows the agency to understand Internet metrics from advertising to sales in near real time. This hyper-accountability is what ultimately brought the online ad industry out of the dot-com crash of the early 2000s—marketers could evaluate their Web spending's impact on the company's bottom line. More sophisticated technology provides marketers with additional details about the consumer. The computer first assigns each user an anonymous and encrypted identification number for tracking purposes. A user profile is then created with data on the content read, keywords used in search, time and day that a Web page was viewed, the frequency with which an ad is seen, the sequence of ads that are seen, the computer operating system of the user, the browser type, and the IP address. From these data, marketers can guess the user's ISP, telephone area code, and NAIC code. They might additionally match these data with demographic information gathered offline to create a clearer picture of consumer behavior than has ever been available.Page 300 However, behavioral tracking, this new ability to track people's behavior on the Internet, has stirred considerable debate. Although software developers claim that the users are tracked anonymously with encrypted identification numbers, privacy advocates believe the marketing method is too invasive.

How Magazines are categorized: Content

Consumer magazines, purchased for entertainment, information, or both, are edited for consumers who buy products for their own personal consumption: Time, Sports Illustrated, Glamour, Good Housekeeping. One would expect to see the Levi's "Go Forth" ads in consumer magazines. Farm publications are directed to farmers and their families or to companies that manufacture or sell agricultural equipment, supplies, and services: Farm Journal, Progressive Farmer, Prairie Farmer, Successful Farming. Business magazines, by far the largest category, target business readers. They include trade publications for retailers, wholesalers, and other distributors (Progressive Grocer, Bakery News); business and industrial magazines for businesspeople involved in manufacturing and services (Electronic Design, American Banker); and professional journals for lawyers, physicians, architects, and other professionals (Archives of Ophthalmology).

AdSense

Google's other major ad program is AdSense. Websites that use AdSense set aside a portion of pages for Google text ads. The ads themselves are selected by Google software and inserted automatically, without any input from the sponsoring site. The revenue model for the AdSense program is very similar to AdWords. Advertisers pay Google only when Web users click the link and visit the sponsor sites. In this case, the owner of the site also gets revenue. For popular websites this can generate a great deal of revenue, and it is thus a powerful incentive for site owners to participate in the Google program.

Types of Direct-Mail Advertising

Direct-mail advertising comes in a variety of formats, from handwritten postcards to dimensional direct mail, utilizing three-dimensional shapes and unusual materials. The message can be one sentence or dozens of pages. And within each format—from tiny coupon to thick catalog or box—the creative options are infinite. In 2003, the United States Postal Service approved Customized Market-Mail (CMM), a new class of mail that gives direct-mail advertisers the opportunity to truly innovate. The new regulations allow for pieces of mail of almost any shape, within certain dimensions, to be sent without an envelope. No longer limited to rectangles, direct mail can now take more novel, eye-catching forms. From simple geometric shapes, like circles, to more curious and bizarre shapes, like Zambonis (used by First Tennessee Bank to promote a checking account associated with a local hockey team), CMM stands out in a sea of mail that might otherwise go directly into the trash.40 In addition to the dimensional direct-mail category are the following: E-mail, as mentioned in Chapter 12, is an important tool in direct marketing and is best used for customer retention and relationship management. It is most effective when the marketer first seeks permission to mail. In other words, advertisers should always give people the opportunity to opt in and to opt out of their e-mail programs. For new business acquisition, the best use is in a viral marketing campaign—otherwise it will probably be perceived as spam.Page 330 Sales letters, the most common direct-mail format, are often mailed with brochures, price lists, or reply cards and envelopes. Postcards are used to announce sales, offer discounts, or generate customer traffic. National postal services regulate formats and dimensions. Some advertisers use a double postcard, enabling them to send both an advertising message and a perforated reply card. To encourage response, some advertisers use business reply mail so the recipient can respond without paying postage. On receiving a response, the advertiser pays postage plus a handling fee of a few cents. Folders and brochures are usually printed in multiple colors with photos or other illustrations on good paper stock. Broadsides are larger than folders and are sometimes used as window displays or wall posters in stores. They fold to a compact size to fit in a mailbag. Self-mailers are any form of direct mail that can travel without an envelope. Usually folded and secured by a staple or seal, they have special blank spaces for the prospect's name and address. Statement stuffers are ads enclosed in monthly customer statements from department stores, banks, oil companies, and the like. To order, customers write in their credit card number and sign the reply card. House organs are publications produced by associations or business organizations—for example, shareholder reports, newsletters, and dealer publications.Page 331 Catalogs are reference books that list, describe, and often picture the products sold by a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer. With more high-income families shopping at home, specialized catalogs have become very popular.

Display advertising

Display ads on the Web are ads that appear on content sites. The most common kinds of display ads are banners and buttons. A banner is a little billboard that spreads across the top or bottom of the Web page. When users click their mouse pointer on the banner, it sends them to the advertiser's site or a buffer page. In response to many agency requests to simplify the ad-buying process, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) introduced the Universal Ad Package, a suite of 16 standard ad sizes (including skyscrapers, rectangles, pop-ups, banners, and buttons) designed to improve the efficiency and ease of planning, buying, and creating online media. Similar to banners are buttons, small versions of the banner that often look like an icon and usually provide a link to an advertiser's landing page, a marketing tool that leads people into the purchasing or relationship-building process. Because buttons take up less space than banners, they also cost less.

Types of Newspaper Advertising: Display advertising

Display advertising includes copy, illustrations or photos, headlines, coupons, and other visual components—such as the ads for the Village Voice discussed earlier. Display ads vary in size and appear in all sections of the newspaper except the first page of major sections, the editorial page, the obituary page, and the classified advertising section. One common variation of the display ad, the reading notice (or advertorials), looks like editorial matter and sometimes costs more than normal display advertising. To prevent readers from mistaking it for editorial matter, the word advertisement appears at the top.

Types of Newspaper Advertising: Public Notices

For a nominal fee, newspapers carry legal public notices of changes in business and personal relationships, public governmental reports, notices by private citizens and organizations, and financial reports. These ads follow a preset format.

Stretching Out the Dollars

For this reason, most advertisers work through ad networks, which act as brokers for advertisers and websites. Ad networks pool hundreds or thousands of web pages together and facilitate advertising across these pages. The advantage is that this allows advertisers to gain maximum exposure by covering even the smaller sites. The drawback is that such advertising is more difficult to monitor. Each site must be watched for traffic and content, which creates problems when trying to calculate costs. Exhibit 12-7 lists the largest ad networks in the United States.

AdWords

Google's search results page is composed of two distinct areas: search results based on PageRank, which are organic (unaffected by sponsorship), and sponsored links. Sponsored links have three important characteristics. First, advertisers do not pay for impressions, a common practice with banner ads. Instead, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on the link and visits the sponsor's site. This performance-based pay-per-click model has proven very attractive to advertisers. Second, the amount that an advertiser owes for each click is determined in an auction, where companies bid for keywords. Higher bids generally lead to better listings, but don't guarantee them, because the ranking of sponsored listings is also determined by an ad's performance. Text ads that attract lots of clicks rise in the rankings, while links that are ignored fall. Third, Google benefits from the targeted nature of search. When people are hunting for a term like marketing, they often find that the sponsored links are as useful as the search results. Google estimates that almost 15 percent of searches result in click-throughs to sponsors, an Page 306 astonishingly high conversion rate in comparison with other media, interactive or traditional. Google's model clearly emphasizes performance

Transit Shelters advertising

In cities with mass-transit systems, advertisers can buy space on bus shelters and on the backs of bus-stop benches. Transit shelter advertising is a relatively new out-of-home form enjoying great success. It reaches virtually everyone who is outdoors: auto passengers, pedestrians, bus riders, motorcyclists, bicyclists, and more. It is extremely inexpensive and available in many communities that restrict billboard advertising in business or residential areas. In fact, shelter advertising is sometimes the only form of outdoor advertising permitted. It's also an excellent complement to outdoor posters and bulletins, enabling total market coverage in a comprehensive outdoor program.

Special Inside Buys

In some cities, advertisers gain complete domination by buying the basic bus—all the inside space on a group of buses. For an extra charge, pads of business reply cards or coupons (called take-ones) can be affixed to interior ads for passengers to request more detailed information, send in application blanks, or receive some other benefit.

Gross Rating Points

In television, gross rating points (GRPs) are the total rating points achieved by a particular media schedule over a specific period. For example, a weekly schedule of five commercials on programs with an average household rating of 20 would yield 100 GRPs.

Technology in Outdoor Advertising

In the past it was always a problem for a media buyer in New York to adequately supervise the selection of outdoor boards in Peoria, Illinois. A buyer can't just jump on a plane and travel to all the cities where the client's boards are posted to verify the value of the locations. Fortunately, though, technology has helped solve this dilemma and has thus made outdoor an even more attractive medium to national advertisers. Today, outdoor companies can use sophisticated global positioning systems (GPSs) to give the exact latitude and longitude of particular boards using satellite technology. Media buyers, equipped with sophisticated new software on their desktop computers, can then integrate this information with demographic market characteristics and traffic counts to determine the best locations for their boards. Perhaps the most exciting development in outdoor advertising is the availability of digital (or electronic) billboards. Ads can be implemented the same day and updated quickly and easily, from hundreds of miles away, over the Internet. Digital billboards can rotate ads among various advertisers or move ads around town, changing them once every 4 to 10 seconds. A restaurant can feature breakfast specials in the morning and dinner specials in the evening. Law enforcement can display the image of a missing person or update emergency information in minutes. Production costs are reduced dramatically. Some digital billboards will even interact with passersby, responding to a friendly wave or communicating with consumers' cell phones. Presently, there are about 4,000 digital billboards in the United States, with several hundred being added each year at a cost of about $250,000 each, versus less than $50,000 for a traditional billboard. Due to safety concerns, more than a dozen cities have banned digital billboards. Los Angeles sign operators were ordered to turn off nearly 100 digital billboards in early 2013. Other cities have placed strict limitations on them while government agencies evaluate their possibly distracting effect on drivers. So far, some studies indicate that there is no relationship between traffic accidents and digital billboards,20 while other studies suggest that electronic signs are distracting.

How Magazines are categorized: Size

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that magazines come in different shapes and sizes, but it might take one to figure out how to get one ad to run in different size magazines and still look the same. Magazine sizes run the gamut, which can make production standardization a nightmare. The most common magazine sizes follow: Size: Large Magazine: Interview Approx size of full page ad: 4 col. × 170 lines (9½ × 111/3 inches) Size: Flat Magazine: Time Full page ad: 3 col. × 140 lines (7 × 10 inches) Size: Standard Magazine: National Geographic Full page ad: 2 col. × 119 lines (6 × 8½ inches) Size: Small or pocket Magazine: Reader's Digest Full page ad: 2 col. × 91 lines

Guerrilla Marketing

It seems that any blank space is an invitation to advertise. The term guerrilla marketing was coined in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book by the same name. He defines the concept as "achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money."37 In recent years, guerrilla marketing tactics have also come to be referred to as stealth, buzz, ambush, street, or viral marketing. Some examples of guerrilla advertising include Folgers converting a steaming New York manhole cover into an advertisement for a hot cup of coffee, Casinò di Venezia decorating a luggage carousel in the Venice airport to resemble a roulette wheel, the Salvation Army printing advertisements to promote donations on blankets distributed to the homeless, Burger King dressing Ronald McDonald statues in Asia with Burger King T-shirts, and streakers running onto a rugby field in Australia with Vodafone logos painted on their bodies. The ultimate goal is to attract attention in an increasingly advertising-cluttered environment.

Types of Newspaper Advertising: Preprinted Inserts

Like magazines, newspapers carry preprinted inserts. The advertiser prints the inserts and delivers them to the newspaper plant for insertion into a specific edition. Insert sizes range from a typical newspaper page to a double postcard; formats include catalogs, brochures, mail-back devices, and perforated coupons. Preprinted inserts give advertisers control over the quality of their catalogs and brochures. Newspapers distribute these inserts at a lower cost than mailing or door-to-door delivery.

Discounts for magazines

Magazines and newspapers often give discounts. frequency discounts are based on the number of ad insertions, usually within a year; volume discounts are based on the total amount of space bought during a specific period. Most magazines also offer cash discounts (usually 2 percent) to advertisers who pay right away, and some offer discounts on the purchase of four or more consecutive pages in a single issue. In fact, many magazine publishers now negotiate their rates.

Premium Rates for magazines

Magazines charge extra for special features. Color printing normally costs 25 to 60 percent more than black and white. Bleed pages can add as much as 20 percent to regular rates, although the typical increase is about 15 percent. Second and third cover rates (the inside covers) typically cost less than the fourth (back) cover. For example, in 2016, People magazine charged $324,400 for a normal color page and $446,500 and $393,000 for the second and third covers, respectively, but it charged $482,000 for the fourth cover (the back of the magazine).

Mall Advertising

Mall advertising can include posters on mall directories, door-and window-mounted signage, advertising on escalators and elevators, banners hanging from ceilings, tabletop ads in food courts, and any other location that might be seen by shoppers. StoreBoard Media (www.storeboards.net) has been placing ads on the entryway security panels of major retail chains since 2006. The company touts an average 20 percent product sales lift over the four-week period in which its ads appear. While the security system may be high tech, the ads themselves are "no tech," says Rick Sirvaitis, president of StoreBoard, New York, which has placed ads in some 14,000 U.S. stores for brands including Coca-Cola, Crest, Halls, and Garnier. "If you pass your peripheral vision test on your driver's license, you can't miss these ads. They have a much greater assurance of being viewed by 100 percent of customers than anywhere else in the store."36Page 328

Eight-Sheet Posters

Manufacturers of grocery products, as well as many local advertisers, use smaller poster sizes. Called junior posters, these offer a 5- by 11-foot printing area on a panel surface 6 feet high by 12 feet wide. They are typically concentrated in urban areas, where they can reach pedestrian as well as vehicular traffic. Space costs roughly half that of a 30-sheet poster and production costs are significantly lower. They are an excellent medium for advertising close to the point of purchase.

Subscription and Vendor Sales

Media buyers also want to know a magazine's ratio of subscriptions to newsstand sales. Today, subscriptions account for the majority of magazine sales. Newsstands (which include bookstore chains) are still a major outlet for single-copy sales, but no outlet can handle more than a fraction of the many magazines available. From the advertiser's point of view, newsstand sales are impressive because they indicate that the purchaser really wants the magazine and is not merely subscribing out of habit. However, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, single-copy sales accounted for only 9 percent of total magazine sales in 2012.9

OUT-OF-HOME MEDIA

Media that reach prospects outside their homes—like outdoor advertising, bus and taxicab advertising, subway posters, and terminal advertising—are part of the broad category of out-of-home media (see Exhibit 13-2). Today, there are more than 40 different types of out-of-home media, generating $6.7 billion in revenues in 2012.13 The most common is on-premise signage, which promotes goods and services or identifies a place of business, on the property where the sign is located.14 Page 319 The golden arches at McDonald's franchises are a good example. On-premise signage is important for helping us find a place of business, but it doesn't provide any kind of market coverage, and it isn't considered advertising.

Digital Interactive Today: Google and Internet Search

Most people looking to find information on the Web use a search engine. Search engines are sites that allow people to type a word or phrase into a text box and then quickly find information. Brin and Page's company, Google, is at present the most popular destination on the Web, reaching an astonishing 40 percent of all Web users each day.5 Search advertising revenues generate billions in revenue for Google, and in fact, represent the single largest category of ad expenditures in digital interactive media.

Search Advertising

Most people looking to find information on the Web use a search engine. Search engines are websites that allow people to type a word or phrase into a text box and quickly receive a listing of information on a search-results page. Revenue from search engine ads accounts for almost half of all digital interactive ad revenue. Search is dominated by one company, Google (see Exhibit 12-7). But such ads didn't even exist in the early days of the web. Google's PageRank analyzes the links and relationships of Internet sites to come up with rankings. When a keyword is entered in a search, Google looks for sites that mention the word. But in addition, Google analyzes links to determine what sites are considered credible. Consider two sites that each use the term marketing five times. If a Web user used marketing as a search term, Google's search engine would locate both sites. But which site should be listed relatively high in the search-results listings, where it will be viewed quickly, and which should be listed lower? This is where PageRank comes in. Sites that other sites link to are assigned higher PageRanks and end up with prominent listings in search results. The algorithm also analyzes the quality of the links. Specifically, sites with especially popular or authoritative websites linking to them get higher PageRanks. The net result of this is a fast search engine that returns remarkably relevant search results.

Pros and cons of cable TV advertising

PROS Selectivity. Cable offers specialized programming aimed at particular types of viewers. Narrowcasting allows advertisers to choose programming with the viewer demographics that best match their target customers. Audience demographics. Cable subscribers are younger, better educated, and more affluent, have higher-level jobs, live in larger households, and are more likely to try new products and buy more high-ticket items, such as cars, appliances, and high-tech equipment. Low cost. Many small companies get TV's immediacy and impact without the enormous expenditures of broadcast TV. Cable advertising can sometimes cost as little as radio. Many national advertisers find sponsorship attractive, since an entire cable series can cost less to produce than a single broadcast TV commercial. Flexibility. Broadcast TV commercials need to be short because of the high costs of production and airtime, but cable ads can run up to two minutes and, in the case of infomercials, much longer. They can also be tailored to fit the programming environment. Testability. Cable is a good place to experiment, testing both new products and various advertising approaches: ad frequency, copy impact, and different media mixes. CONS Limited reach. Only about 10 percent of households don't have cable. This was cable's main weakness in the past, but it is less so today. Fragmentation. With more than 50 channels at their disposal, cable viewers do not watch any one channel in enormous numbers. To reach the majority of the cable audience in a particular market, ads must run on many stations. Quality. Cable, particularly local cable, sometimes has poorer production quality and less desirable programming than broadcast TV. Zipping and zapping. Cable TV has some of the same drawbacks as broadcast TV, such as zipping and zapping.

Primary and Secondary Readership

Primary circulation represents the number of people who buy the publication, either by subscription or at the newsstand. Secondary (or pass-along) readership, which is an estimate determined by market research of how many people read a single issue of a publication, is very important to magazines. Some have more than six readers per copy. Multiplying the average pass-along readership by, say, a million subscribers can give a magazine a substantial audience beyond its primary readers.

Pros and cons or newspaper advertising

Print ads in general and newspapers in particular provide a unique, flexible medium for advertisers to express their creativity—especially with businesses that rely on local customers. Newspapers offer advertisers many advantages. One of the most important is timeliness; an ad can appear very quickly, sometimes in just one day. Newspapers also offer geographic targeting, a broad range of markets, reasonable cost, and more. But newspapers suffer from lack of selectivity, poor production quality, and clutter. And readers criticize them for lack of depth and follow-up on important issues. The Pros Mass medium penetrating every segment of society. Most consumers read the newspaper. Local medium with broad reach. Covers a specific geographic area that comprises both a market and a community of people sharing common concerns and interest. Comprehensive in scope, covering an extraordinary variety of topics and interests. Geographic selectivity is possible with zoned editions for specific neighborhoods or communities. Timeliness. Papers primarily cover today's news and are read in one day. Credibility. Studies show that newspaper ads rank highest in believability. TV commercials are a distant second. Selective attention from the relatively small number of active prospects who, on any given day, are interested in what the advertiser is trying to tell them or sell them. Creative flexibility. An ad's physical size and shape can be varied to give the degree of dominance or repetition that suits the advertiser's purpose. The advertiser can use black and white, color, Sunday magazines, or custom inserts. An active medium rather than a passive one. Readers turn the pages, clip and save, write in the margins, and sort through the contents. A permanent record, in contrast to the ephemeral nature of radio and TV. Reasonable cost. The Cons Lack of selectivity of specific socioeconomic groups. Most newspapers reach broad, diverse groups of readers, which may not match the advertiser's objectives. Short life span. Unless readers clip and save the ad or coupon, it may be lost forever. Low production quality. Coarse newsprint generally produces a less impressive image than the slick, smooth paper stock of magazines, and some newspapers can't print color. Clutter. Each ad competes with editorial content and with all the other ads on the same page or spread. Lack of control over where the ad will appear unless the advertiser pays extra for a preferred position. Overlapping circulation. Some people read more than one newspaper. Advertisers may be paying for readers they already reached in a different paper.

The Impact of Social Media and Streaming

Social media are also important in encouraging viewers to watch a program. As shown in Exhibit 11-5, 54 percent of the 18-to-34 age group and 48 percent of the 35-to-49 age group started watching a TV program because of online opinions in Facebook.17 While social media hold immense promise as tools for increasing the power of network and cable TV, they may also prove a threat. This is because social media companies are exploring the value of running their own video ads. Facebook plans to sell its own TV-style ads to advertisers for $2.5 million a pop. The ads would allow marketers to purchase entry into a person's feed with 15-second spots, potentially reaching up to 100 million people. Streaming media are also transforming the TV viewing experience. Audiences have many options for how and when they view their favorite shows. They may choose the "appointment TV" approach and watch when a show airs on a network. Alternatively, they may watch on streaming platforms like the ones provided by Hulu+, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. Or they may download their favorite show on Apple iTunes or Amazon. These options are available because of efforts by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple to make it easy to stream TV content.19 Some of this content features commercials (like Hulu+). Some is commercial-free (like Netflix). Screenshot of numbers on computer.

Digital Interactive Today: social media

Social media exist on the Web, so it may seem strange to consider them as a separate category. But for advertisers, social media represent a very different opportunity than traditional web pages. First, social media, as compared with traditional, are uniquely created from audience content. Audiences go to social media not just to read or be entertained, but to post, blog, share, and create. This has the effect of changing the goal for many social media advertisers. They don't want consumers to only read or watch their messages, they want to engage them. They look for opportunities to get followers to share information about their brands. And they look to interact with them in a free-wheeling, somewhat uncontrolled environment. The importance of social media can be seen by the fact that Facebook is beginning to challenge Google as the most popular destination on the Web. But what is social media? OnlineMatters defines social media as "any form of online publication or presence that allows end users to engage in multi-directional conversations in or around the content on the website." An attribute that attracts advertisers to social media is openness. When someone posts to Facebook, comments on another's blog, or posts a description of themselves on LinkedIn, that information may be open for anyone to see. A host of tools collects all of this information using keywords. Nielsen's Buzzmetrics or J.D. Power's Umbria Communications help marketers aggregate all the information being posted about their brands or products to understand the general consensus, negative or positive. Brands like Oreo, Coca-Cola, Virgin America, and Procter & Gamble all have a social media component for each brand or product they market. Smart marketers understand that social media foster interactions that go beyond promotion or advertising. Social media go beyond promotion because companies must listen as much as they speak. But for all of the difficulties, marketers gain one enormous benefit: they are put back in touch with their customers. And that can be a very good thing.

How People Use Digital Media

Some people believe that the first era of the Web has already passed, and that a new philosophy drives the activities of some companies. This philosophy is characterized by the idea that the future of the Web is in companies that encourage user sharing and collaboration (see Exhibit 12-4). Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, is often cited as a prime example of this new philosophy. Unlike most other encyclopedias, Wikipedia is not constructed from articles penned by authorities or experts. Instead, anyone can create an entry, which in turn can be edited by someone else. In this sense, the site represents the efforts of thousands of users, rather than hundreds of authorities. Other examples of this type of collaboration include Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest, and Craigslist.

Special Outside Buys

Some transit companies offer bus-o-rama signs, jumbo full-color transparencies backlighted by fluorescent tubes and running the length of the bus. A bus has two bus-o-rama positions, one on each side. A single advertiser may also buy a total bus—all the exterior space, including the front, rear, sides, and top. Any visitor riding on the Las Vegas monorail can't help but become totally immersed in the BankWest of Nevada brand. In addition to a full exterior train wrap, BankWest of Nevada has branded the floor, the roof, the train entry doors, and the lightbox graphics. © Las Vegas Monorail Company For years, New York subways have been running brand trains, which include all the subway cars in a particular corridor. However, with the July 2004 opening of its monorail system, the city of Las Vegas took the concept further. The glitz of the city's strip extends to its public transportation: Each of the nine monorail trains and seven stations has a corporate Page 326 sponsor, and many feature elaborate immersive advertising themes. Immersive advertising describes the integration of advertising into the message delivery mechanism so effectively that the product is being promoted while the audience is being entertained. The result is that the prospect becomes totally immersed in the message and the brand.

Web Portals and Popular Websites

The first big Web success stories were known as portals. A portal is a site that provides an array of content and services so broad that (it is hoped) users spend a lot of time at the portal and very little time anywhere else. Portals, like Yahoo!, want to keep visitors for as long as possible to create many opportunities for exposing visitors to ads or fee-based content. Thus, making money at a portal involves attracting lots of people and keeping them around so they can see advertising. You may be thinking that this revenue model seems similar to that of traditional media and, in fact, it is. Yahoo! remains one of the most visited sites on the Web, reaching over a quarter of all Web users on a daily basis.

Spot announcements

Spot announcements run in clusters between programs. They are less expensive and more flexible than network advertising because they can be concentrated in specific regions of the country. Therefore, local Page 275 businesses are frequently seen on spot schedules. An advertiser with a small budget or limited distribution may use spots to introduce a new product into one area at a time. Or an advertiser can vary its message for different markets to suit promotional needs. Spots may run 10, 15, 30, or 60 seconds and be sold nationally or locally. Spot advertising is more difficult to buy than network advertising because it involves contacting each station directly. The national rep system, in which individuals act as sales and service representatives for a number of stations, alleviates this problem. Spot advertising is available only at network station breaks and when network advertisers have not purchased all of the available time, so spot ads may get lost in the clutter—which is why they tend to have less viewers and a smaller piece of the ad spending pie.

Standardization of the Outdoor Advertising Business

Standardized OOH advertising uses scientifically located structures to deliver an advertiser's message to markets around the world. In the United States, there are approximately 364,000 outdoor ad structures owned and maintained by some 2,100 outdoor advertising companies, known as plants. 11 "Number of Out-of-Home Displays," retrieved at: https://www.oaaa.org​/Portals/​0/Images/​Number%20of%​20OOH%20​displays%​20Chart​%202016​.JPG Plant operators find suitable locations (usually concentrated in commercial and business areas), lease or buy the property, acquire the necessary legal permits, erect the structures in conformance with local building codes, contract with advertisers for poster rentals, and post the panels or paint the bulletins. Plant operators also maintain the structures and keep the surrounding areas clean and attractive.

Syndication

Syndication is the sale of programs on a station-by-station, market-by-market basis. In other words, a producer (for example, Warner Bros. or Disney) deals directly with stations, often through a distribution company, rather than going through the networks (see Exhibit 11-8). This efficient "direct-from-the-factory" approach gives local TV stations more programming control and greater profits. It also gives advertisers access to inventory (commercial time) that they might not get on network programs—often at better prices. Syndication has become the largest source of programming in the United States. Television syndication comes in three forms: off-network, first-run, and barter. In off-network syndication, former popular Page 276 network programs (reruns) are sold to individual stations for rebroadcast. Examples include Big Bang Theory and Law and Order. First-run syndication involves original shows, like Family Feud, Inside Edition, and Judge Judy, which are produced specifically for the syndication market. A good deal for both syndicators and affiliates is barter syndication (also called advertiser-supported syndication). This involves off-network or first-run programs offered by producers to local stations free or for a reduced rate, but with some of the ad space (usually more than half) pre-sold to national advertisers. Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and Ellen are some examples.

Video alternatives to TV commercials

TV product placements occur when advertisers showcase their brands within television programming rather than commercials. Most people who've watched the popular show American Idol can't help but notice the prominent Coke cups placed in front of the Page 277 judges. An entire episode of the ABC comedy Modern Family revolved around the Apple iPad. While these are some of the most obvious examples of product placements, advertisers such as Reynolds (Top Chef), Ford Fusion (New Girl), and Hyundai Tuscon (Walking Dead) have invested heavily in product placements. Viewers may not even be aware just how frequently product placements appear on television. Exhibit 11-9 demonstrates just how common the practice has become.

THE MEDIUM OF TELEVISION

Television networks and stations are available to advertisers in four principal forms: broadcast, cable, digital, and satelite. Broadcast networks can reach audiences by transmitting electromagnetic waves through the air across some geographic territory. Cable networks reach audiences exclusively through cable or satellite systems. Digital formats, such as Hulu and CBS All Access, afford consumers the opportunity to watch shows on demand.

Defining Television Markets

Television rating services define unique geographic television markets to minimize the confusion of overlapping TV signals. The Nielsen station index uses the term designated market areas (DMAs) for geographic areas (cities, counties) in which the local TV stations attract the most viewing. For example, the DMA for Columbus, Georgia (see Exhibit 11-11), is the 17 counties in which the local area TV stations are the most watched.

The Web

The 1990s was also the decade in which people began going online to access a particular part of the Internet known as the Web. The Web, as its name implies, was a distributed network of content providers and users, communicating through a protocol known as HTML, or HyperText Markup Language. HTML allowed for the relatively easy creation of web pages that can be easily linked to all kinds of content, including other web pages or sites (and, later, photographs, movies, databases, audio files, and such). Viewing web pages was made easy by the development of web browsers, software that interpreted HTML.

Regulation of Outdoor Advertising

The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 controls outdoor advertising on U.S. interstate highways and other federally subsidized highways. It was enacted partly in response to consumer complaints that outdoor advertising was spoiling the Page 322 environment. Over 700,000 billboards were removed by 1991, the year Congress banned the construction of new billboards on all scenic portions of interstate highways.23 Since that time, the image of outdoor advertising has improved dramatically. Today, most people polled say they like billboards, believe they promote business, and find they provide useful travel information for drivers. Among the most important users of digital billboards are law enforcement agencies. The FBI uses digital billboards to track down wanted fugitives and crack difficult cases. To date, the FBI credits digital billboards with directly leading to more than 50 arrests. Association of America Each state also regulates, administers, and enforces outdoor advertising permit programs through its department of Page 323 transportation. Some states (Maine, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska) prohibit outdoor advertising altogether. Ironically, though, some of these states use outdoor advertising themselves in other states to promote tourism.

The internet

The Internet is a global network of computers that communicate with one another through protocols, which are common rules for linking and sharing information. The Internet began in the early 1960s as a result of the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) plan to create a network that could survive a Cold War attack. ARPAnet had little commercial value; its primary users were governmental organizations and research universities, and the Internet of today is a far different medium. However, ARPAnet was important because its structure, a distributed network, was revolutionary. Traditionally, media content has been delivered through centralized networks, in which a hub, such as a TV station, a newspaper publisher, or a cable company, distributes Page 294 content to many receivers (see Exhibit 12-2). In a centralized system, if the hub is knocked out, receivers are left without information. But a distributed network is one characterized by many different hubs and links, which allows continuous communication even if some connections stop working. And, importantly, no single participant controls content. There are at least two other important distinctions between the digital interactive and traditional media. The first is the cost of time and/or space. In traditional media, time (on TV or radio) and space (in print) are precious and limited resources. Network TV commercials average 30 seconds, which is a very small window, and that window is expensive, sometimes costing advertisers hundreds of thousands of dollars. In contrast, space on the Internet is vast and inexpensive. Websites can store as much information as a company wishes. For consumers who require lots of facts before they make a decision to buy, this is a real plus. And for small advertisers with limited budgets, the economics are very attractive. The second distinction between traditional and digital media concerns the relationship between those who create content and those who consume it. Traditional media companies are content creators while audiences are content consumers. As an example, NBC develops and schedules a show and, if you enjoy it, you sit down on at the same time and night each week to watch it. NBC is the creator and you are the consumer. But digital media are interactive, blurring the line between content providers and consumers. The connected audience doesn't just consume online content; it interacts with it and helps create it.

THE PROS AND CONS OF TRANSIT ADVERTISING

The Pros Long exposure. The average transit ride is 25 minutes. Repetitive value. Many people take the same routes day after day. Eagerly read messages. Riders get bored, so readership is high and ad recall averages 55 percent. Low cost. Transit ads cost less than any other medium. Creative flexibility. Special constructions and color effects are available at relatively low cost. Need satisfying. Transit can target the needs of riders—with ads for cool drinks in summer, for example. Food ads do well as evening riders contemplate dinner. Environmentally sensitive. As social pressure to use public transportation increases, transit is well positioned as a medium of the future. The Cons Status. Transit lacks the status of the major advertising media, like print and broadcast. Crowded environment. Rush-hour crowding limits the opportunity and ease of reading. The vehicle itself, if dirty, may tarnish the product's image. Limited selectivity. Transit reaches a nonselective audience, which may not meet the needs of some advertisers. Clutter. Cards are so numerous and look so similar they may be confusing or hard to remember. Location. With outlying shopping malls, fewer suburbanites make trips downtown. Creative restrictions. Although transit cards may carry longer messages than billboards, copy is still limited.

BUYING OUTDOOR ADVERTISING

The basic unit of sale for billboards, or posters, is 100 gross rating points daily, or a 100 showing. One rating point equals 1 percent of a particular market's population. Buying 100 gross rating points does not mean the message will appear on 100 posters or on 100 percent of the posters; it means the message will appear as many places as needed to provide a daily exposure theoretically equal to 100 percent of the market's total population.

Rating Services

The companies that measure the program audiences of TV and radio stations for advertisers and broadcasters are called rating services. These firms pick a representative sample of the market and furnish data on the number and characteristics of the viewers or listeners. Companies subscribe to a service and use it as a basis for planning, buying, or selling media advertising. In the United States, Nielsen Media Research is the major rating service for television. Its flagship service, the Nielsen Television Index (NTI), uses a national sample of households equipped with meters to develop audience estimates for all national TV programming. The meters are hooked up to TV sets in 25,000 homes across the country and continuously measure the channels to which each set is tuned. People meters go a step further in 25 major markets and gather information about who is watching in addition to the channel tuned. At the local level, Nielsen surveys 1.6 million households. Household members record their viewing habits in diaries. Four times each year, during the sweeps month-long rating periods, Nielsen collects and processes the data. This information is used by networks and local stations to determine how much they can charge for advertising on their shows. Some advertisers and broadcasters maintain that Nielsen's reports are unstable and inaccurate.25 Nielsen faces an enormous challenge keeping up with changes in TV viewing habits. For example, many viewers watch shows on streaming platforms after they've been broadcast. Nielsen's existing measurement techniques are not well equipped to track such viewing habits. Popular platforms like Netflix and Amazon Plus are even delivering their own original programs. And the TV experience itself is changing, as people integrate social media use with TV viewing. Exhibit 11-10 provides insight into the methodology of collecting Nielsen ratings.

Inside and Outside Cards and Posters

The inside card is placed in a wall rack above the vehicle windows. Cost-conscious advertisers print both sides of the card so it can periodically be reversed to change the message, saving on paper and shipping charges. Inside car-end posters (in bulkhead positions) are usually larger than inside cards, but sizes vary. Outside posters are printed on high-grade Page 325 cardboard and often varnished for weather resistance. The most widely used outside posters are on the side, rear, and front of a bus. Advertisers may also buy space on taxicab exteriors, generally for periods of 30 days, to display internally illuminated, two-sided posters positioned on the roofs. Some advertising also appears on the doors or rear of taxicabs. In southern California, advertisers can rent cards mounted on the tops of cabs that travel throughout Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties, serving major airports and traveling the busiest freeways in the country. Costing an average of $100 to $200 per month per cab ($400 in New York City!), this is a very cost-effective way to reach the mobile public.

Seeking Standardization

The simplest measurement is the ad impression. The IAB originally defined an ad impression as "an opportunity to deliver an advertising element to a Web site visitor." When a user loads a web page with ads on it, the browser will pull the advertisement from its host ad server and bring it up as a banner, button, or interstitial. The number of ad requests received can then be translated into the familiar cost form. The problem with this definition, from the point of view of advertisers and agencies, is that the advertiser is not guaranteed that a user will ever see an ad. People often click away to some other site before the requested ad ever comes up. Under the original definition, an advertiser would be charged for an ad that never actually had been seen. The AAAA prefers to define an ad request as an ad that is actually delivered to users' screens. Eventually the IAB and other digital interactive advertising groups agreed that an impression has to be counted on the client side (the web user's browser loads the ad) rather than the server side.13 A second measurement, unique to the Internet, is the click rate or click-through rate (CTR). A click occurs when a visitor moves the mouse's pointer to a web link and clicks on the mouse button to get to another page. The click rate is the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of ad impressions. In essence, marketers are measuring the frequency with which users try to obtain additional information about a product by clicking on an advertisement. Advertisers love CTR as a benchmark of ad effectiveness because it reflects a behavior. Charging for clicks is the key to Google's amazing success with search.

TYPES OF DIGITAL INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING

The technical definition of a website is a collection of web pages, images, videos, or data assets that is hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet. A corporate site is used to give background information about an organization, product, or service. A commerce site is used primarily to sell a product or service. Of course there is a fine line between these definitions; for companies like Amazon.com the corporate site is the commerce site and vice versa. Good marketers look at their website broadly. They understand that the website is an extension of the brand and that the website experience is synonymous with a brand experience. Knowing that not all corporate sites are quite up to snuff to deliver on this brand extension, many marketers use microsites and landing pages to deliver the desired experience. A microsite is used as a supplement to a website. For advertisers it is typically singular in focus and delivers on the current advertising message. For instance, when Electronic Arts (EA) launched the Return of the King video game after the very popular movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings, it had Freestyle Interactive build a robust microsite that gave users cheats, codes, game screens, and exclusive videos and also gave users a chance to win a replica sword from the movie. The kicker was that to unlock the content, users actually had to go on an Internet-based scavenger hunt to find four pieces, or shards, of the sword. Each piece unlocked more content until the sword was "reforged" and the user could open the cheats and enter to win the replica sword. The microsite was able to identify how many pieces each user had found. Any web page can be a landing page—the term used to describe direct links to deeper areas of the website that advertising drives consumers to beyond the homepage. Typically advertisers use landing pages to give consumers a more relevant experience as it relates to the message from the advertising. For instance, if someone searches for "men's dress pants" on Google, Dockers wants to send them directly to the men's apparel section, and more specifically all the way to the pants page, rather than making the user click two or three more times just to find the relevant products.

Buying Transit Advertising

The unit of purchase for transit advertising is a showing, also known as a run or service. A full showing (or 100 showing) means that one card will appear in each vehicle in the system. Space may also be purchased as a half (50) or quarter (25) showing. Cost depends on the length and saturation of the showing and the size of the space. Rates vary extensively, depending primarily on the size of the transit system. Advertisers get rates for specific markets from local transit companies.

The Cost of Targeting

The very selective nature of the Internet can, for additional cost, be combined with tracking technology to be discussed later. This makes for a very focused campaign. Companies such as Tacoda work behind the scenes to meet the advertiser's CPM guarantees by using software that directs specific ads to a highly selective audience. Because Tacoda technology "tags" users, it can build a consumer profile and show those ads that are likely to be of the greatest interest to that specific web user.

How Newspapers Are Categorized: Physical Size

There are two basic newspaper formats, standard size and tabloid. The standard-size newspaper is about 22 inches deep and 13 inches wide and is divided into six columns. The tabloid newspaper is generally about 14 inches deep and 11 inches wide. National tabloid newspapers such as the Page 254 National Enquirer and the Star use sensational stories to fight for single-copy sales. Other tabloids, such as the New York Daily News, emphasize straight news and features.

Vertical and Horizontal Publications

There are two readership classifications of business publications: vertical and horizontal. A vertical publication covers a specific industry in all its aspects. For example, Penton publishes Nation's Restaurant News strictly for restaurateurs and food-service operators. The magazine's editorial content includes everything from news of the restaurant industry to the latest food and beverage trends. Advertising Age is a good example of a vertical publication. The magazine is geared toward a variety of issues specific to the advertising industry. Unlike horizontal publications, which focus on a single job function across various industries, the periodical is read by people in a wide range of functions throughout the advertising industry. Horizontal publications, in contrast, deal with a particular job function across a variety of industries. Readers of HR Magazine work in human resources in many different industries. Horizontal trade publications are very effective advertising vehicles because they usually offer excellent reach and they tend to be well read.

Poster Panels

This term originated in the days when printing presses were much smaller and it required many sheets to cover a poster panel. The standard poster panel (standard billboard) is the most widely used form of OOH advertising. It is far less costly per unit than the bulletin. The poster sheets are mounted on a board with a total surface of 12 by 25 feet and are usually changed every 30 days. The majority of them are illuminated. Engagement can be important in outdoor advertising, especially in urban settings. This clever Mountain Dew ad not only gets people to interact with a billboard that is 40 feet off the ground, but it actually gets people to take pictures, ensuring a longevity beyond the time the ad will run. Source: Pepsi Cola Company Some local advertisers get high-quality OOH advertising at reduced cost by using stock posters. These ready-made posters Page 318 are available in any quantity and often feature the work of first-class artists and lithographers. Local florists, dairies, banks, or bakeries simply place their name in the appropriate spot.

Reading Rate Cards

Three dates affect magazine purchases. The cover date is the date printed on the cover. The on-sale date is the date the magazine is actually issued. And the closing date is the date all ad material must be in the publisher's hands for a specific issue. Lead time may be as much as three months.

The Use of Television in IMC

Through its unique ability to deliver a creative big idea, television can impart brand meaning (the symbolism or personality of the brand) to either attract people to the brand or reinforce their current relationship with it. Television is also a good leverage tool. That is, an Page 273 advertiser might take advantage of the relatively low CPM of television to reach out to many prospects. Prospects can identify themselves by responding to the commercial, and then the advertiser can follow up with less expensive, one-to-one or addressable media.

Spectaculars

Times Square in New York is well known for its spectaculars—giant electronic signs that usually incorporate movement, color, and flashy graphics to grab attention in high-traffic areas. Spectaculars are very expensive to produce and are found primarily in the world's largest cities, such as Tokyo, London, New York, Los Angeles, and, of course, Las Vegas.

Types of Outdoor Advertising

To buy OOH advertising effectively, the media planner must understand its advantages and disadvantages and the types of structures available (see My Ad Campaign 13-A, "The Pros and Cons of OOH Advertising"). Standardized structures come in three basic forms: bulletins, 30-sheet poster panels, and eight-sheet posters. For extra impact, some companies may use the nonstandard spectacular.

TRANSIT ADVERTISING

Transit advertising is a category of out-of-home media that includes bus and taxicab advertising as well as posters on transit shelters, terminals, and subways. Although transit is not considered a major medium by most advertising practitioners, standardization, better research, more statistical data, Page 324 and measured circulation have made transit advertising more attractive to national advertisers. National marketers of designer apparel and movies, for example, are two of the many categories of advertisers spending dramatically more in this medium, replacing the traditional transit advertising leaders such as petroleum products, financial services, and proprietary medicines. Transit advertising is a cost-effective way for marketers to reach a large audience of people. Buses and taxis provide high ad exposure by traversing the busiest streets of a city many times a day. A 1-800-Flowers.com campaign promoting the company's specialty bouquets featured ads on buses, on subway stations, and in other urban locations. The company's sales were seven times higher in markets where the outdoor campaign ran.26 Transit advertising is equally popular with local advertisers. Retailers can expand their reach inexpensively and often receive co-op support from national marketers, which thrive on the local exposure2

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the Internet version of word-of-mouth advertising. The term was coined by Steven Jurvetson and his Page 308 partners at the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. They were describing free e-mail provider Hotmail's incredible growth to 12 million users in just 18 months through the use of a little message at the bottom of every e-mail. The message invited recipients to sign up for their own free Hotmail account.

Special Possibilities with Magazines

When the dark or colored background of the ad extends to the edge of the page, it is said to bleed off the page. Most magazines offer bleed pages, but they charge 10 to 15 percent more for them. The advantages of bleeds include greater flexibility in expressing the advertising idea, a slightly larger printing area, and more dramatic impact. If a company plans to advertise in a particular magazine consistently, it may seek a highly desirable cover position. Few publishers sell ads on the front cover, commonly called the first cover. They do however sell the inside front, inside back, and outside back covers (the second, third, and fourth covers, respectively), usually at a substantial premium. A less expensive way to use magazine space is to place the ad in unusual places on the page or dramatically across spreads. A junior unit is a large ad (60 percent of the page) placed in the middle of a page and surrounded with editorial matter. Similar to junior units are island halves, surrounded by even more editorial matter. The island sometimes costs more than a regular half-page, but because it dominates the page, many advertisers consider it worth the extra charge. Exhibit 10-2 shows other space combinations that create impact. Sometimes, rather than buying a standard page, an advertiser uses an insert. The advertiser prints the ad on high-quality paper stock to add weight and drama to the message, and then ships the finished ads to the publisher for insertion into the magazine at a special price. Another option is multiple-page inserts. Calvin Klein once promoted its jeans in a 116-page insert in Vanity Fair. The insert reportedly cost more than $1 million, but the news reports about it in major daily newspapers gave the campaign enormous publicity value. A gatefold is an insert whose paper is so wide that the extreme left and right sides have to be folded into the center to match the size of the other pages. When the reader opens the magazine, the folded page swings out like a gate to present the ad. Not all magazines provide gatefolds, and they are always sold at a substantial premium

Bulletins

Where traffic is heavy and visibility is good, advertisers find that the largest bulletin structures work best, especially for long-term use. Bulletins measure 14 by 48 feet, plus any extensions, and may carry either painted or printed messages. They are created in sections in the plant's shop and then brought to the site, where they are assembled and hung on the billboard structure. Billboard advertising is generally viewed from 100 to 500 feet away by people in motion. So it must be simple, brief, and easy to discern. Large illustrations, bold colors, simple backgrounds, clear product identification, and easy-to-read lettering are essential for consumer comprehension. The recommended maximum for outdoor copy is seven words. Very bold typefaces appear blurred and thin ones seem faded. Ornate typefaces are too complicated. Simple type is the most effective. Spacing between letters and words (kerning) should be increased to improve readability. Painted displays are normally lighted and are repainted several times each year. Some bulletins are three-dimensional or embellished by extensions (or cutouts) that stretch beyond the frames of the structure. Variations include cutout letters, backlighting, moving messages, and electronic time and temperature units called jump clocks. Painted bulletins are very costly, but some advertisers overcome this expense by rotating them to different choice locations in the market every 60 or 90 days. Over time, this gives the impression of wider coverage than the advertiser is actually paying for. The dominating effect of bulletins frequently makes them well worth the extra cost—especially in small markets.