American Advertising Federation - Research Paper Example

Introduction The major feature of the nature of media rendering serious influence on media economics is their dependence on technological progressin information-communication sphere. Traditionally dependable on technological progress and political changes media systems today are remarkable for the special dynamism in their development. In the history of mass communications the speed, with which the Internet has won the mass audience, is unprecedented. It has passed 38 years before the US radio audience has reached 50 million people. The TV has passed the same way for 14 years. The Internet needed only four years that the number of its users in the USA has made 50 million persons. "To say that the Internet with its millions of end users operating 24 hours per day is a complex system would be one of the greatest understatements of the 21st century" (Miller, 2004, p.1). Complex consequences of such progress of information-communication technologies for the sphere of media today still cannot be estimated unequivocally. It is obvious, that such development means technological evolution of traditional media. An example of transformation of wired networks in independent sector of the media industry has already shown, that the creation of new technology of distribution of television signals has led to occurrence of the new form of the television business offering to audience a new product and new services. The similar chain is observable by consideration of a course of technological progress in other media. In general it can be presented as follows: Technological changes of media Structural changes in media sector New media products New media services What is new media What counts as new media is often debated, and is dependent on the definitions used. There is no one united definition for the term 'new media'. According to Chun & Keenan (2006, p.1), "the term 'new media' came into prominence in the mid-1990s, usurping the place of 'multimedia' in the fields of business and art...Although new media depended heavily on computerization, new media was not simply 'digital media': that is, it was not digitized forms of other media (photography, video, text), but rather an interactive medium or form of distribution as independent as the information it relayed". Among new media we may consider: Video games and virtual worlds Multimedia CD-ROMs Software Web sites including blogs and wikis Email and attachments Electronic kiosks Interactive television Mobile devices Podcasting Hypertext fiction But "these new media are not completely new phenomena. They have been growing out of 'old media' for some time" (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2006, p.206). Old or traditional media include analog radio and TV and printed materials such as books and magazines. Superiority of the USA, certainly, is no surprising as fast development of the Internet is provided here with the extraordinary development of television and computer industries. Popularity of global computer network and mobile telephony in northern countries seems, at first sight, paradoxical. Especially brightly this paradox is shown by comparison of position of interactive and digital "new media" with position of "old" mass-media and in particular printed press. The countries of Northern Europe keep the highest in the world parameters of popularity of newspapers, magazines, national TV and radio channels. Let us consider these comparative data. Data per 1000 people Finland Germany France Great Britain USA Number of newspapers 464 317 156 321 213 Number of TV sets 511 560 591 439 790 Number of personal computers 280 170 160 200 360 Number of connections to the Internet 77,2 14,1 8,9 22,8 30 Number of phones 558 483 547 489 602 Number of mobile phones 420 60,6 33,7 106,1 149,5 Place in the world on 6 parameters 2 13 20 14 1 According to Joukkoviestimet. Finnish Mass Media 1998. Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, 1998. S. 314-337; Drok, N. Local and Regional Journalism in Europe. European Journalism Training Association, 1997. P. 236-250. Marketing and media Nowadays the wave of new options in news media has overflowed consumers, and at such quantity of accessible technologies of entertainment and communications it is much heavier to reach the consumer. In this new environment an old marketing strategy quickly looses efficiency, and in some cases become absolutely irrelevant. Consumers are not going to suffer from "annoying" advertising any more to such degree they suffered before. That is why more and more individual marketing strategies become very efficient methods of attraction of on-line, network consumers. "With the Internet, cellular phones, video game systems, on-demand cable, DVRs and other technologies, consumers are not as accessible via mass market advertising like television or print" (Borgia & Good, 2005). Now consumers have access to unlimited quantity of the information in unprecedented scale. They know, what products are accessible, and know how to find them. Now they use advertising pauses for fast calls by mobile phones or for choosing between hundreds of cable channels. Visual advertising are ignored as users leave for PDA. Add to all above said information-sharing, accessible now for network users. Just few negative responses about a product can bring to nothing an advertising campaign, and positive statements do advance it more successfully than any other marketing strategy. As a matter of fact now consumers control these issues in a much greater degree, than they did before. Therefore marketing experts (if they want consumers positively estimate a marketed product) should first of all respect a consumer and deliver qualitative products. Let us make a comparison of new and traditional media. Old media New media One-to-many One-to-one and many-to-many Greater monologue Greater dialogue Active provision Passive provision Mass Marketing Individualized General need Personalized Branding Information Segmentation Communities About 73 % of experts in marketing today direct about of 20 % of advertising budgets of the companies to advertising in new media. These data contain in research of American Advertising Federation (2007). It is possible to familiarize with it on site AAF. In total in interrogation AAF took part about 1000 experts in marketing of the leading companies, representatives of advertising agencies and the media-industry. On the average, according to authors of the report, expenses of the companies on promotion of the goods and services by means of "new" media today make about 15 % of cumulative advertising budgets (from 12 up to 18 % of the budget). Thus only 10 % of respondents have declared, that all their advertising budget is directed to "traditional" media, while 12 % of the interrogated marketing specialists have recognized, that 21-40 % of advertising budgets of their companies are directed to "new" media. Marketing experts have also been asked on how their marketing approaches and the attitude to various kinds of media will change in 2007. 78 % of interrogated have agreed with the statement " I am always opened for new opportunities of use of traditional media". And 75,5 % have supported the statement " the correct media-mix is almost always a combination of traditional and new media ". And 57,7 % interrogated have agreed with idea, that "they never will stop in search of new media opportunities for promotion of the brand ". All three listed above statements were most popular among interrogated. 77 % of respondents have recognized, that did not expect the "arrival" of Second Life, and 60 % were taken by surprise with success of YouTube. 51 % have noted popularity of sites aggregating content (mash-up). The majority of the interrogated marketing experts expect serious changes in media space in the near future. According to results of interrogation, first of all, television become widely accessible in the Network, secondly, in the USA Internet text dispatches will become accessible everywhere, and the communications will be more and more often spread by means of social networks and the Internet. Thus among those media-tools, which will undergo to the greatest changes, respondents named newspapers (51,4 %) and TV (34,5 %). So now let us consider the advantages of new media in marketing taking the Internet advertising as an example. The audience of the Internet constantly grows quantitatively and qualitatively. Both youth and adult people with the high prosperity use the Internet. But it is not the only advantage that involves new and new advertizers in the Internet . The matter is that the Internet gives some opportunities, which are inaccessible to any other kind of advertising. The first advantage: the modern level of Internet development enables to create presentation of any product or service at a level unattainable for any other media. Theoretically there is an opportunity to show all the best parties of a product and to give maximum of the information about it both on pages of magazines and on TV, but charges for broadcasting time and the printed areas in this case are not compensated by any sales volumes. Even the greatest. Example: there is a new female product with special properties and the scheme of application in the market - an anti-cellulite treatment. The Internet allows to create the presentation of the given treatment including: the history of the treatment creation, attractive images of a bottle, an illustration of its action (before application and after application), the detailed description of mechanisms, due to which the effect is reached, the description of ways of application and possible contra-indications, history of company-manufacturer etc. Beside it is possible to place the information that tells what cellulitis is and why it is necessary to struggle it. As it is also possible to place favourable reports about the given treatment and results of testing of the given treatment. It is possible to list places where it is possible to buy the product and to give phone-numbers of a hot line for any additional questions.The level of influence of such presentation on potential consumers is non-comparably higher than any other way of influence as it gives the fullest volume of information to people the given problem (cellulitis). And the cost of creation of such site makes from 500 up to 2000 dollars depending on the requirements. The second: the Internet enables not only to address the advertising message to the necessary target group, but also to see in real-time mode the reaction to the given message, and moreover, to manage this reaction, changing the advertising message for the achievement of the maximal effect. Example: it is created the site devoted to a new product (an anti-cellulite treatment ). On the other specialized female sites the banners inviting women to get acquainted with or to buy it the product are placed. The statistics in real-time mode shows: how many women have seen your banners, how many women have become interested and "have cluck" on banners, what is the time they have lead on the presentation site, how many purchases have been made. So now it is possible to begin work at each of these parameters from the first day of supervision, improving them up to the demanded level (by altering advertising banners or changing the accents in presentation of the product). Thus very fast comes the understanding of what can interest your target audience and in further this experience (received rather cheaply ) can be transferred to other mass-media, where similar experiments are rather expensive or in general hardly possible. The third: the Internet allows to make advertising campaigns, bringing to nothing the influence of competitors. It is beyond any company's power to redeem 100 percent of broadcasting time on one of channels of TV for advertising of the only brand (or brands). It is also impossible to redeem 100 % of journal or newspaper strips to exclude direct competitors from magazine advertising . But practically any large company can redeem 100 % of banner displays on ten thematic Internet resources in order to lead an advertising campaign without the slightest pressure from competing brands. Example: some competing companies simultaneously set some similar products on the market (that happens often enough). They buy the strips of the same magazines and try to make so that their product has been faced by the greatest quantity of readers. However the degree of influence of advertising messages on a new product decreases not only by a new product of the competitor, but also by hundreds other advertising messages placed in the given magazines. That is readers paying not so much attention on advertising anyway may just not notice a "new" product on a background of variety of "not new". And thus the most part of the advertising budget is spent all for nothing. However if one of the companies will include the Internet advertising in its advertising plan, it gets an opportunity to outstrip competitors because advertising on the Internet is placed as much as possible operatively and thus to skim the cream off. And on having redeemed 100 % of banner displays on thematic portals it is possible to propose to the target audience the information on a new product avoiding not only the influence of competitors, but also the influence of any other distracting advertising messages. How it is possible Very simply! The matter is that the quantity of banners on each Internet a site is limited. As a rule, it is 2-3 banners on page. Moreover, as a rule, it is through banners placed on each page of a site in the same place. At the redeeming of 100 % of displays of such banner the advertising of a product will be seen by each visitor on all pages of a site. It is necessary to add that the people, who cluck on a banner and have got acquainted with the Internet presentation of a new product, receive much more detailed information about it, than about a product of the competitor. It is geberally known, that buyers in shops choose the products, about which they are better informed. So we may conclude that it is wrong to state that new media have nothing more to offer the marketer than the traditional forms of marketing communications. Refernces: American Advertising Federation. (2007). Meida Investment Survey 2007. Retrieved April 19, 2007 from http://www.aaf.org/news/pdf/aafmediasurvey_2007.ppt Borgia, K.C. & Good, R. (2005). Personalized Marketing for New Media - Interruptive Advertising for Mass Media. Retrieved April 19, 2007 from http://www.masternewmedia.org/marketing/personalized_marketing/advertising_approaches_for_new_media_and_mass_media_20050927.htm#. Chun, W.H.K. & Keenan, T. (2006). New Media, Old Media: a history and theory reader. Routledge. Lievrouw, L.A. & Livingstone, S. M. (2006). Handbook of New Media: social shaping and social consequences of ICTs. Sage Publications. Miller, M.A. (2004). Internet Technologies Handbook: optimizing the IP network. Wiley-IEEE. Read More