What are some advantages and disadvantages of using TV as an advertising medium, and how do these factors affect the use of major national advertisers and smaller local companies?

In the past, advertisers viewed television as the ideal medium for promotional purposes. But due to recent technological advancements, the importance of advertising through television has now changed. Now-a-days, people are not limited to only watching TV, they are thought to spend a great amount of time surfing the web, playing on their Ipads, Iphones, and tablets, and more recently people have the ability to fast-forward advertisements when they are watching their favorite programs!!!!  It’s so easy to just skip all the advertisements during a show.  Although TV might be the easiest and most common way to reach the masses, is it still the best way to advertise?  There are several pros and cons when advertising through this medium… but the question is do the pros outweigh the cons?

Advantages:

There are several benefits when using TV as an advertising medium.

Creativity:

Using television commercials gives advertisers the ability to combine visual images, sounds, motion, and color, allowing the advertiser to be as creative, imaginative as they wish, and they can now appeal to more consumers world wide. Advertisers are also given the opportunity to attract customers by appealing to a consumer’s sense of sight and sound. Commercials that directly appeal to these senses can change the viewer’s mood through humor or ethos, even their overall perception of the advertised brand, as well. Emotional appeal is a key advantage of advertising through television over the less attractive appeals of other mediums.  Today, advertisements can also be shown using HD Resolutions, allowing audiences to view the ad crystal clear, vividly detailed, and very lifelike images across their flat screen tv’s.

Coverage & Cost:

Television has the ability to reach the masses. Ask yourself this question… How many people you know that do not watch TV? (Shows like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Games of Thrones make it hard for me to ignore my television.) With the popularity and coverage of various programs, audiences regardless of age, sex, income, and education level are bound to watch some form of television. TV gives advertisers the benefit of reaching the masses (globally) in a cost efficient manner. For example, companies that take part in distribution their product and services word wide reach millions of viewers. The prices companies had paid last year to advertise on average have cost between $50- AND UP in normal time slots (Wagner, n.p.). PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and AT&T take advantage of using television as their main source advertising globally. For local companies, they have the ability to reach their targeted market easily, and also cost efficiently averaging $25(and up) for standard 30-second spots.

Flexibility & Selectivity

Advertisers also have the ability to select what channels and time of day their ads will run, which allows them to reach their target audience. For example, Toys-R-Us usually runs ads on Cartoon Network, while Pepsi and Coke run ads during huge occasions like the super bowl to reach their largest targeted demographic.

Disadvantages:

Although there are many advantages of advertising using TV as a medium there are limitations, as well.

Cost & Selectivity

It can be inexpensive to reach a large pull of audiences, but some companies are forced to spend millions in order to compete for airtime. Costs are derived from buying airtime, and the cost of producing and creating commercial. On average, in total for a 30-minute nationwide spot on a popular Station, it is nearly $400,000 dollars. Media driven creative strategies that also target specific groups, such as Hispanics and African Americans can also be pricy due to selectiveness in various channels, and fighting for time slots with large companies. Local ads can also be pricy, and are usually not appealing, which is also a waste of time, money, and the effort, if it does not attract audiences.

Advertisers seeking small-targeted audiences to generate a lot of waste coverage, and might not even grab the attention of their audience. Local advertisements might also reach audiences outside their targeted market, in a geographic sense. Case in point, local advertisements in Pittsburgh reach regions in Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia, which are customers who are out of reach, making their commercials, waste coverage, and inefficient to the company. For local ads, newspapers, emails, radio ads, and magazines might be a better and a less expensive medium for adverting to select pools of people.

Clutter & Limited Viewer Attention:

Advertisers seem to forget that they are not buying guaranteed exposure, but in fact a chance to communicate their message to large numbers of consumers. People often use their TiVo  or DVR to zip through ads, eliminating the purpose of ads altogether.  (I avoid commercials like the black plague.)

Also, clutter is another disadvantage advertisers face. Some stations take advantage of advertising their owns shows during commercials breaks and cutting paid ads slot times down to 9-seconds, clutter eliminates audiences attention and also can make the audience even more uninterested in paying attention to ads, and more anxious to get back to the TV show that they were watching to begin with. The CW is one station that comes to mind when thinking about clutter. Every time I tune in, I see ads that promote their own shows rather than other products or company’s  ads.

All in all, I believe the pros outweigh the cons when using TV as a medium for advertising. I also think it is important to diversify advertising outlets through various mediums, especially for smaller ads, and local companies.

Works Cited:
How Much Does Television Advertising Really Cost? | Chron.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/much-television-advertising-really-cost-58718.html
Belch, GE. and Belch, MA.  Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 9th Edition.  McGraw-Hill Companies.  2012.

What is waste coverage, and why might it not be a good media buy?

In advertising and promotion the term waste coverage is defined as a situation where the coverage of the media exceeds the target audience (Belch and Belch, 773). For example, some business-to-business advertisers like copy machine companies advertise on NFL Sundays and Monday night football slots. This type of ad coverage reaches people who are not potential buyers or users for these products.

You might be asking yourself this question, why are companies spending on advertisements that do not reach their target market?

I found that some waste coverage is unavoidable for advertisers.  Advertisers cannot dictate every audience member that views their ads making waste coverage inevitable for all companies. For example, Axe Body Spray typically runs ads during the super bowl, or on channels like Spike TV. Although those channels are male dominated, there is still a small population of females who enjoy the shows and tune into this channel. Axe Body Spray does not target women but the women that view the ads are (in most cases) not the target market, making their ad waste coverage for this small percentile. All consumers may not be part of the intended target market but can still be considered potential buyers, because they could be buying for other.

Advertisers do make the effort in minimizing waste coverage to as much as they can, because it is expensive to run ads that will not reach their target audience. On the other hand, if advertisers plan, set objectives, and create sound strategies then they can create commercials that target a specific audience, while appealing to the masses.  And at the same time they are making their products more widely known by the general public.

Unfortunately, there is always a trade off in advertising. Especially when focusing on eliminating waste coverage, because in order to advertise to the greatest amount of people in the targeted market, there will automatically be a small amount of waste. As long as the product or service is not overexposed, waste coverage is acceptable because the media employed is likely to be the most effective means of delivering available and cost of the waste coverage is exceeded by the value gained from their use (Belch and Belch, 343).

Belch, GE. and Belch, MA.  Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 9th Edition.  McGraw-Hill Companies.  2012.

Best and worst Superbowl Ads

Although I was not extremely excited about the Super Bowl (because the Steelers were not playing) I still managed to tune into the game. The 2014 face off between the Seahawks and the Broncos was not the most interesting game, but the commercials in between the plays had caught my attention.

This year there were a couple memorable ads, and on the opposite end some ads I'd like to forget.

Starting off, my pick for the best commercial would be… you guessed it,  Audi’s “Doberhuahua” commercial.  

This commercial captivated me and drew my attention immediately because it was insanely humorous. The ad showcased a young couple that had gone to a pet store to adopt a dog. The couple could not compromise on what breed they wanted, so a store associate had given the couple the idea to breed a Doberman Pincher and a Chihuahua together. The couple took the associates advice and ended up with a monstrous hybrid Doberhuahue by the fault. The bigheaded, tiny-bodied dog was terrifying. The commercial had also featured Sarah McLachlan, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) spokeswomen, did not have any tolerance when it came to this devilish dog either. 

The commercial delivered the message that you should agree to buy a Audi, and not a devilish dog. I believe this commercial appealed to all audiences, capturing everyone’s attention.

Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl0zw1YVZd4

Another great commercial was Dancia Patrick's GoDaddy 2014 ad. I enjoyed this commercial because it was different than the usual nearly explicit ads the company runs to promote their business. This year, instead of over sexualizing a woman to promote GoDaddy, the company put Danacia Patrick appeared as a body builder, with other muscle bound men sprinting through the city in order to get a spray tan.  This ad was funny, and also caught the audiences attention because of the celebrity endorsement. Although using a celebs as an endorsor can be risky, Dancia Partrick has always had a squeaky clean image for her accomplishments as being one of the first female nascar drivers, making a huge impact in a male dominated industry.

Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFNXRIe9jU0

The worst advertisement in my opinion was the Chevy “Romance” commercial. After watching the commercial several times, I still could not decipher the message behind the commercial. This ad did not have a clear message and was not very appealing in my opinion. The commercial attempted to be humorous, but failed miserably. I had went on twitter immediately after the ad had aired and read positive and negative feedback about the primis of the commercial. Some found bull breading romantic and hilarious, personally I found it strange, and did not understand how it would make me want to buy a Chevy. 

Click to view:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOMrA-BGuLY

Surprisingly enough, I did not seem to find any ads  to be deliberately sexist, and was shocked that most ads featured animals as their stars rather than sexualizing women to sell various products.  I was pleased to see various ads featuring themes of female empowerment from Glodiblox toys, representations of interracial couples from Cheerios, and a twist to the iconic  "American the Beautiful" melody which had been lyrically altered into various languages by Coca-Cola.

This years ads in particular had been inspiring, amusing, I was pleased to see different themes throughout this years Super Bowl ads.


You can check out all the super bowl ads if interested here:

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl-commercials/0ap2000000321512/T-Mobile-Breakup?continuous=true