Introduction
The effectiveness of advertising can be difficult to measure because there are so many different ways that advertising can be considered effective. Whether or not the advertising is effective also depends on the needs of the advertisers. Traditional metrics include sales, brand awareness, and a positive attitude toward the brand (Brenner, 1972). There are a lot of elements that can increase or decrease advertising effectiveness, including the media used to present the advertising and the type of message. For example, some messages are humorous, gender biased, creative, and multicultural.
Modern advancements in technology have made digital media a huge part of everyday life, but advertisers are still unsure of exactly how to use this media for advertising and they’re especially unsure of how to gauge its effectiveness (Edeleman, 2014). Online advertising comes in many forms, banners, paid search, interactive, etc., all relatively new to the advertising landscape. Digital advertising comes with many drawbacks, but it is considered one of the best ways to reach young people who are resistant to all advertising (Te'eni-Harari, 2014).
This paper will look at the effectiveness of both traditional advertising and digital advertising and seek to discover where traditional advertising can be applied to digital advertising. Researching at both types of adverting, and how they’re used in conjunction will help create a comprehensive study of effective advertising. This paper will use 20 scholarly articles to discover relevant studies on both digital and traditional advertising effectiveness. Afterwards, this paper will make recommendations as the best ways to blend traditional and digital advertising.
Review of Literature
1. Price and Advertising Effectiveness over the Business Cycle
Seeking to test the effectiveness of long-term advertising, short-term advertising, and price elasticity, the authors studied 36 consumer-packaged goods in 150 brand varieties for 18 years (Van Heerde, et al., 2103). The length of the study allowed for the authors to set a predictable business cycle tuned to the time of the year. Removing the natural business cycle from the data set, the authors found that consumer purchasing was not driven b advertising or by cost, but by gas prices. Consumers were more likely to buy consumer goods (no matter what the advertising or price) when gas prices were low. The study also found that advertising is more effective during economic downturns years (Van Heerde, et al., 2103).
2. Search Engine Advertising Effectiveness in a Multimedia Campaign
This study measured the effects of search engine advertising using four different metrics including; advertising awareness, and brand awareness, image, and consumption (Zenetti et al., 2014). The results were that consumers had a significant increase in brand awareness after clicking on advertising links, with a lesser impact on brand consumption. While this contradicts Van Heerde’s study, it demonstrates the importance of search engine advertising.
3. Gender Roles and Humor in Advertising
4. Measuring effectiveness of advertising expenditures
Article discusses various ways that advertisers can measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Since this was written in the 1970s, the article is somewhat antiquated, but still contains some relevant information. Brenner (1972) lists several metrics including brand awareness, consumer attitude towards brands, response to promotions, and most importantly, sales. The author calls for more ridged measurements and goal-based metrics for measuring advertising effectiveness.
5. Effectiveness of Advertising Using the AIDA Model
The AIDA advertising model uses four stages of advertising: gain consumer awareness, generate interest, create enthusiasm, and entice to buy (Gharibi et al., 2012) the authors discovered that the effectiveness of the AIDA model is dependent on the type of product that is being offered. For example, it’s difficult to generate interest and enthusiasm in products such as insurance, but the model is easy to follow for music and similar offerings.
6. Effectiveness of Advertising in Different Media
This article looks at different advertisements for U.S. Army recruitment. For the sake of the article the author considers enlistment in the Army “sales.” The researchers found that television advertising was the most effective medium leading to sales, followed by radio advertising. Newspaper advertising was the least effective (Dertouzos and Garber, 2006). This research is incomplete because it does not include any kind of Internet or digital advertising.
7. Measuring the Effectiveness of Advertising and PR
Voss (1992) offers some insight into general advertising and Public Relations (PR) trends. Overall, an increase in any kind of advertising efforts leads to more consumers buying products. Also, more frequent advertising can lead to up a 600% increase in sales (Voss, 1992). PR efforts have been shown to lead to a 52% increase in sales. The author warns about slipping ethics in advertising and PR.
8. A Case Study of a Multimedia Blitz Campaign
9. A Model for Predicting Advertising Quality As a Key to Driving Sales Growth
This article followed the quality of the fast food restaurant McDonald’s advertising for six and half years and linked the advertising with fluctuations in sales revenue. The authors determined that creatively strong (high quality) advertisements were linked to short-term increases in revenue, but long term growth is tied to proper branding (Young and Page, 2014).
10. Which Products Are Best Suited to Mobile Advertising?
Bart and Sarvary (2014) explored Mobile Display Advertising (MDA) and researched which products are best for the platform. The extensive study encompassed 54 products and close to 40,000 consumers. The study found that the majority of mobile advertisements fail. The authors concluded that most companies need to develop their MDA to make it more effect. Common problems include advertising that’s too small for their screen and an inability to for the ads to fully render. However, the study found that MDAs are more effective than traditional online advertising.
11. Delivering Branding Value Through High-Impact Digital Advertising
This article studies the use of “high-impact” digital advertising to sell Kellog’s Special-K® products. This study addresses some of the issues surrounding inefficient digital advertising discussed in other articles. Some of the elements of effective “high-impact” digital advertising include large, or full-screen, displays and interactive multimedia advertisements.
12. Advertising Creativity
These authors explore the impact of creativity and novelty in advertising. Lehnert and Ospina (2014) define creativity as divergence, meaning advertisements that are dissimilar from current offerings and meaningful instead of simply stating product attributes and calling to action. The study looked at peoples’ reactions to 30 articles, 15 that were deemed creative and 15 that were deemed less creative. The authors found that creative and divergent advertisements were more effective than other advertisements, and meaningfulness had little effect on consumer response.
13. Advertising Effectiveness among Young People
Te'eni-Harari (2014) explores was to get young people, a hard demographic to reach, involved with interactive advertising. The author also studies how effective those interactive advertisements are on encouraging young people to buy products. The study showed that interactive advertising had a positive effect on brand recognition and lead to a favorable view of the brand among youth. However, the interaction did not have any effect on the young peoples’ intent to buy.
14. Cross-National Advertising and Behavioral Intentions
15. Pitfalls and Fraud In Online Advertising
Edeleman’s (2014) article offers some insight as to why some types of digital advertising are ineffective. Online adverting metrics are often unreliable and digital advertising companies have misplaced objectives that are at odds with the needs of their clients. Finally, digital advertising is such a new front that accountability has not been standardized.
16. Digital Game Changers: Social Media
Fulgoni and Lipsman, (2014) explore some of the reasons that, although digital media use is on the rise, monetization and digital advertising lags behind in effectiveness. The authors suggest that social media advertising is the most effective digital promotion, and the best way to reach young people.
17. Advertising Co-Creation
Building on the idea of social media advertising, Thompson and Malaviya (2013) research the effect of consumer generated advertising. Consumer generated advertising includes social media messages about a product, consumer product reviews, and advertisements created by consumers. The results were that consumers were somewhat skeptical that the advertisements were actually created by consumers, and not the brand. But, this did not impact the consumers’ attitude toward the brand and it may increase brand awareness.
18. The Effectiveness of Cosmetics Advertising
This article researches whom women respond to more in cosmetics advertising, extremely attractive, thin, idealized women; or the girl next-door type of women. The study found that, in general, women responded more positively to non-idealized women and they trusted brands that used these more “normal” looking women (Antioco et al., 2012).
19. Internet Versus Television Advertising
Companies are resistant toward switching their advertising spending from television ad spots to Internet advertisements. This is for some of the reasons listed in the earlier articles ‘Pitfalls and Fraud In Online Advertising’ and ‘A Case Study of a Multimedia Blitz Campaign.’ The researchers found that it is harder to build brands online because each advertisement doesn’t have the same amount of views as a television advertisement (Draganaska et al, 2014).
20. Effective Web Advertising Strategies
Researchers study how to use a consumer’s curiosity to engage them in interactive digital advertisements. Menon and Soman (2012) discovered that consumers were more likely to engage with interactive advertising for new products, or brands that they had never heard about, than products that they’ve learned about from other advertising sources
Conclusion
Running a digital adverting campaign alongside a traditional campaign is not enough to address the needs of digital advertising. In order to be effective, digital advertising needs to have unique elements tailored toward the brand needs, the advertising objectives, and the potential audience. On the other hand, digital advertising can benefit from some elements of traditional advertising because many of these elements will appeal to consumers no matter what the method of media delivery.
Moving forward, digital advertising campaigns need to be separate from other media campaigns. Since digital advertising is better at gaining brand awareness than inciting purchase, digital advertising campaigns should go before other media advertising campaigns. Advertisers should focus on digital interactivity, mobile advertising, and social media adverting with an emphasis on advertising co-creation. These ads should also focus on engaging consumers’ curiosity, especially when it comes to new brands and products. Mobile advertising has some of the most potential, but advertisers need to focus on making mobile advertising more readable and interesting.
Digital advertising should also focus on using some of the elements that are effective in traditional advertising. These elements include humor, creativity, quality, multiculturalism, and “natural” looking women. Since these elements work so well in traditional advertising, it can be assumed that effectiveness will translate to digital advertising.
While the measurements of the effectiveness, and some strategies may be different digital advertising is the key to reaching younger consumers who have an increasing amount of spending power.
Reference List
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