What is an advertisement?
The main purpose of the advertisement is to make us buy, to pay for a product or service. This is something that almost everyone knows.
We open parentheses.
The word “propaganda” is still often used when in fact it is “advertising”. Let’s get this straight. Propaganda and Advertising are similar, we agree. The difference is subtle and causes confusion, hence it is used interchangeably. When someone tells us something like “I have saved a very funny advertisement to show you”, we know that they are surely referring to advertising. And when the neighbor comments, in the middle of the elections, that he has thrown away all “the advertising of political parties”
It’s not the same. And nothing more everyday than hearing a neighbor complain about the amount of “propaganda in the mailbox”, and in reality, it is not a pamphlet from a political party or a religious entity but rather leaflets from supermarkets and shops in the neighborhood.
We would like to help distinguish them: advertising wants you to buy a product or service, and/or to prefer one brand over another, and propaganda wants you to know a movement (activist, political, social), a line of thought or ideology, a concept… and support it.
They use common roads and arts in order to reach the population, both work on in-depth communication, require dissemination, are strategic, use design… but the objective differs in terms of the content and the final objective of the communication. The semantics are also usually very different.
And here comes an infallible way to distinguish them: if the message comes from a company or commercial brand, it is advertising, because companies do not advertise.
After this preamble that we wanted to share, let’s go for the advertisements.
We close parentheses.
The advertisement is a type of communication that seeks to promote a brand, a service, a product. It is a message, usually brief and concise, designed with graphic and/or audiovisual elements, in order to impact the consumer.
It has a wide variety of formats and can be streamed across many channels. Knowing what the primary objective is will be what marks the starting point in its construction.
Let’s look at four key characteristics:
1. Unidirectional: communication is transmitted in one direction (brand to consumer).
2. Promotional: highlights the service or product by focusing on some relevant factors (price, quality, innovation, etc.).
3. Paid: its development, design and implementation are paid. If you don’t pay, we’ll call you in other ways but not advertising.
4. Customizable: but be careful, it can be personalized or not (social networks allow it, but a magazine or newspaper does not).
Based on this definition, we can add others that will make the ad a more or less effective tool: creativity, complexity or simplicity, originality, means used, etc.
In general, advertising has three functions: to inform, to persuade and to remember.
1. Informative Advertising: its objective is to publicize accurate information about a product or service, about an existing or recently launched brand.
It is used to increase the consumer’s level of knowledge about an existing product, give them more data about it to create a climate of trust and transparency.
Also, to “educate the customer” about the benefits or virtues of a product (new or not). In the pharmaceutical or food industry, it is very common.
2. Persuasive advertising: it wants to convince that this or that brand or product is “the best option” for the consumer. Communication is designed to try to influence, alter the perception and image of a brand or company to a higher level.
Another of its objectives is the loyalty or testing of a new product. Giving them the option of giving their opinion or returning it (or recovering the cost), usually convinces a large part of the market.
3. Reminder advertising: it is clear that its purpose is to remind the consumer of a brand, and incidentally, its characteristics, advantages, needs when buying a certain product or service.
When a brand has great market penetration and is well-known, the mission of the advertisement goes beyond persuasion or information: it is to keep in the user’s mind the appropriate argument that contributes (or justifies) its consumption.
Apart from these three groups or purposes, there are more secondary objectives. They all come together to generate demand in the market, expand the portfolio of customers or consumers, facilitate interaction between brand and clientele…
To finish the block of objectives, and using a play on words, we will say that advertising has been badly propagandized. There are those who reject it for the sake of it, defining it as a malevolent message to convince people that they should spend their money on a product they don’t need.
The power of advertising is great but not so great (the quote by O.R. Wilson that we recently shared with you on Instagram is very good).
A vote in Favour of and in defense of advertising: in general terms, it is not a question of assessing whether a campaign is liked or not, or whether it has been effective, but of understanding that it is necessary, because it brings benefits.
Benefits for the company: it gives it strength, makes the brand visible, provides presence, consolidates the corporate image and helps to highlight its competitive advantage, to differentiate itself.
Benefits for the consumer: it informs, allows comparison thanks to the knowledge of the market offer, facilitates their decision process and causes brands to work on their constant improvement to gain their trust.
Let’s now get to know the six types of advertisements (currently):
1. SEM
The most well-known in digital marketing, mainly Search and Display.
Nothing more direct than showing you an ad as a result of your search. It’s just text. Years ago we distinguished it by its background color, now it is clearly shown as sponsorship, that is, paid content. Not everyone perceives it as such, but as a random and casual suggestion. And there is nothing casual about it.
They are bare-bones ads with links, designed to grab your attention and get you to click…
In the case of the Display, perhaps the most classic and still working. These ads have text and can also contain images, animation, audio, video, or other interactive elements. The most common is the banner, which will be placed at the top or side of the landing page.
In both cases, campaigns must be designed according to some parameters set by Google and can be made up of a group of ads that alternate, showing different content each time. To develop an effective campaign, you need to be based on SEO and SEM.
Tip: we find them ideal for retargeting or remarketing campaigns, which consist of personalized ads for users who have already interacted with the advertised brand. If you want to know what they are, you can put this word in the search engine of our blog
2. Social Networks
All networks offer the possibility of carrying out advertising campaigns. The main advantage is that it quickly increases visibility, and depending on the channels and tools used, it can be hyper-segmented, so that we will be addressing the target audience, mainly.
3. Printed
It is usually used mainly by large brands; its objective is to reach consumers and prospects. Print advertising is the format, small or large, that uses physically printed media.
Within this type we find all kinds of brochures and advertisements in magazines and newspapers (paper).
4. Outdoor
What defines this group is that it is always in a public place and is usually of considerable size.
If we ask you for an example of outdoor advertising, the first thing that probably comes to mind are large billboards on the side of the road or motorway.
We will add more: posters (on the street), illuminated signs* and backlights (backlit monitors), street furniture (signage at bus stops and the like), on buses -fully labelled-, huge canvases that surround buildings or shopping centers, banners, rollups… are all those supports that are installed in public places or where shows, cultural events, sports events, etc. take place.
Could the signage that decorates stands be considered outdoor advertising?
We think so
*Outdoor advertising is a great consumer of LED screens, so iconic and common in cosmopolitan cities.
5. Audiovisuals
These are advertisements in large media, such as television and radio, and we also want to include online videos in this group, with YouTube as the “ideal” digital medium for this type of paid content.
6. Native
It is digital advertising with a non-intrusive format, which is fully adapted to the medium in which it appears. It is perceived differently from the traditional advertisement, thanks to this “mimicry”. Hence it is called native, because it is designed according to the environment for which it is intended. It moves less investment than the previous ones, as it is an organic type of advertising and depends on the quality of its content, since it is camouflaged with total respect for the editorial style. For this type of ad, copywriting is crucial.
Every brand, service, or product needs YOUR campaign. Behind an advertisement there is a complex work, from the brand to the consumer, including formats and media. And let’s not forget the budget.
The final creative or text is the tip of the iceberg. There are announcements that have gone down in history, I’m sure we agree. Doesn’t it happen to you that there are ads that take you to a specific moment in life?
