BroadVision Marketing Blog

We are still looking at the basics in advertising.  We all agree that advertisers are people who pay money to put up a message though a medium, including digital media, physical advertising, online, and product placement. Let’s take a closer look at digital advertising, physical advertising and promotions.

Digital advertising

Television commercials are “The” most efficient mass-marketing advertising platform. That’s why they cost the big bucks, especially during popular airtime, like prime time or the Super Bowl football game. In 2009 the single 30 second spot during the game cost its advertiser $3 million. Besides just showing the ad, the advertiser includes a song or jingle that help people remember the product. Virtual advertisements on television are interesting phenomena. They are mostly used at sporting events where the backdrop has computer graphics that changes as different products are displayed.



Infomercials are long-formatted television commercials ranging in length from five minutes to all day. The word “infomercial” is the combination of the words “information” and “commercial”. The point is to get the watcher to make an impulse purchase while watching the ad, using a toll-free phone number written on the ad.

Radio advertising has to be purely set to sound. According to Arbitron, radio has approximately 24.1 million weekly listeners, which translates to more than 90 percent of the U. S. population. The music/jingle becomes even more important in this medium.

Online advertising is a form of promoting ideas, items, and services. These ads are delivered by an ad server and include search engine results pages, banner ads, text ads, Rich Media ads, social networking ads, online classified ads, advertising networks and email marketing, which includes spam.

Product placements are also called covert advertising and guerrilla advertising. This is done when the product or brand is embedded in a movie, television or other media. Cars, sports shoes, watches, drinks and other things are explicitly shown for their advertising value.

Physical advertising

Newspapers, magazines, trade journals contain advertising in a printed medium. One specialized form is classified ads, which allows a person  or a company to buy a small targeted ad for a small amount. The display ad is another, larger ad that is seen in the article section of a newspaper.

Billboards cater to people in public places who are either walking or in cars. They are most often seen on main highways, but they can also be in any location with a lot of viewers, such as on busses, in stations, in malls, on buildings or stadium walls.

Mobile billboards are generally mounted on a bus, car or other vehicle. Mobile billboards even include banners attached to airplanes. Some of these billboards have signs that change the message or that rotate through a series of advertisements. They are often used for one-day, long-term, conventions, sports events, and store openings.

In-store advertising is seen so much that a person can forget that they are looking at ads. These can include product placement at eye level, ends of the aisle or near check-out counters.  Ads can be on shopping carts and in-store televisions.

Celebrity branding has to do with a celebrity speaking for a product or promoting specific stores, cars clothes.  Celebrity branding can be seen on television and print advertisements. There is a drawback if the celebrity gets in trouble.

Sales Promotions

Another way to advertise is through sales promotions. These work in two ways because they help the seller gather information about what type of customers are drawn in and they also can jumpstart selling of products.  Some promotions include contests or games, sweepstakes, product giveaways, coupons, loyalty programs and discounts. All these encourage the potential customer to accept a call-to-action.

We have taken a more intense look at the placement of advertisements in our world. How many of there were you aware of? Please comment in the box below.

Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

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