Understanding advertising media - Essay Example

Capturing the true essence of advertising is an exigent task for there are varying factors that greatly affect its definition. One of these factors that cause modification in the meaning of the term is the media used. At present times advertising encompasses different avenues of communication.These include the printed media such as magazine, books and newspapers; visual media such as the television; the electronic media such the internet and other diverse form of tools that can attract the attention of the target market to a certain product (Richards & Curran, 2002).

In the developing world of advertising and the business market, the printed media remains to be the primary avenue used. In the United kingdoms, the newspapers and magazines are established form of media utilized for advertising. The Guardian is one of the newspapers in the UK that receives a comparatively significant readers' share as compared to other newspapers and magazines.The Guardian is one of the leading newspapers in the United Kingdom. There are factors that affect the competitiveness of this newspaper.

The Guardian is known for covering news in a wide range of fields that is presented in a visually stimulating design that attracts the readers. This is due to the fact that the newspaper is being printed in colour which is unique for broadsheets. Another feature of the newspaper that serves purpose is the size of The Guardian and its printing process; the speed of production decreases with the size of the paper, thus, this size lessens the time needed for production of the Guardian (Hollis, 2005).

Aside from the lay-out of the newspaper, the primary aim of this printed media is to impart issues that are pioneering and at the same time is of significant value to the target readers. Reaching and attracting a diverse population of readers is also important for any newspapers and media, thus, the Guardian made use of the advantages of the internet to be able to target the readers online (Rusbridger, 2006). In the study of any form of media, attributes such as the target market, the circulation and coverage are considered.

In the case of the written media, the editorial style is one factor that is deemed important. This factor mainly deals on the style of writing of a particular published work such as the newspaper. The primary consideration is the organization of the presented information in a newspaper. Every data imparted must be unambiguously constructed in prose or paragraphs and in a language that is considered formal yet not expressed in jargons that some groups of readers would not be able to understand.

The literary presentation includes the construction of every story, the priority given to each story and the presentation of every titles and subtitles. May it be in the printed version or as seen in the web, the interface and the layout are important. Being a paper presented in full colour can be used to its advantage (Lynch & Horton, 2004). The aesthetics of the paper presentation can be used as a tool to attract readers whose readership and attention largely depends on being captured visually.

The Guardian has 14.5 percent readers share compared to the other newspaper that is distributed daily. There is an increase which can only show that there is an improvement in the number of readers targeted by the newspaper. This is made possible although according to data presented The Guardian has the least volume sales. Thus, this can only mean that compared to the sales made in groups more individual readers purchase the Guardians (The Guardian, 2006a). In terms of readership on the other hand, a research that is periodically conducted by the National Readership Survey (NRS) revealed the following results.

The result for the 2005 NRS is presented in Table 1. Based on the analysis conducted by The Guardian, an increase of 11.6% was observed in the survey results from NRS for the period of 12 months or one year.