The Death of Advertising

Abstract

Mass media advertising as we know it today is on its deathbed, and its prognosis is poor. Advertising agencies are restructuring to accommodate a harsher advertising climate, agency income is flat, agency employees are being laid off, direct marketing is stealing business from traditional advertising, and the growth of sales promotion and integrated marketing communications both come at the expense of traditional advertising. The reason for advertising's impending demise is the advent of new technologies that have resulted in the fragmentation of media and markets, and the empowerment of consumers. In the place of traditional mass media advertising, a new communications environment is developing around an evolving network of new media, which is high capacity, interactive and multimedia. The result is a new era of producer-consumer interaction. Because of the speed of technological innovation, the new media advertising paradigm that results will attain prominence faster than did mass media advertising. The new paradigm of 21st Century Marketing and advertising will be dominant by 2010 and should last well into the middle of the century. If they hope to survive, university advertising departments will have about ten years to 1) think of themselves much more broadly, and 2) transform themselves into departments specializing in information transfer in the new media environment.     

Pan-European Advertising: Think Europe—Act Local

Changes in Europe resulting from the unification of EC countries and the accessibility of new Eastern European markets have fundamentally altered the trading environment in which advertising agencies operate. As the advertising industry attempts to get to grips with legislative and media changes, agencies are working hard to create alliances and develop networks which encompass markets in which they did not traditionally have a presence. This article draws on a combination of quantitative and qualitative information collected from secondary sources and extended personal interviews with key agency personnel, advertisers and representatives from the UK's Advertising Association and The Advertising Standards Authority. The objective is to show how the advertising industry and agencies are continuing to gear up to meeting the new demands of the Europeanized market.     

A comparison of parents' and children's knowledge of brands and advertising slogans in the United States: implications for consumer socialization

Research in the area of consumer socialization suggests that parents act in an agent–learner relationship with their preadolescent children and have the greatest influence on their young children's purchase behaviour. The present study examines this assumption in light of changes in family roles and composition, media exposure and marketing efforts aimed at children. A cognitive recognition test of advertising slogans drawn from recent television commercials is used to determine knowledge levels of a sample of preadolescent children and their parents. Results suggest that children, beginning at age nine, have as much knowledge of advertising slogans as do their parents, even in product categories targeted at adults.     

‘Hello,Mrs. Sarah Jones! We recommend this product!’Consumers' perceptions about personalized advertising: comparisons across advertisements delivered via three different types of media

As new technologies (e.g. online, mobile and interactive TV) develop worldwide, numerous types of personalized advertising, in which companies use an individual's name and/or other types of personal information, have become more popular in many countries. Using many types of information about specific individuals, personalized advertising is designed to convey a customized message at the right time to the right person using diverse media. However, despite its universally increased use, few academic studies have explored the effectiveness of personalized advertising and consumers' response to it. This exploratory study focused on consumers' perceptions of personalized advertising delivered online (e‐mail) and offline (letter and telephone call). The results show that consumers generally have negative perceptions of personalized advertising, regardless of how it is delivered, with the strongest negative reaction to telephone calls.     

The Panoptic Role of Advertising Agencies in the Production of Consumer Culture

Advertising's role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical theorists yet the mechanisms through which this influence becomes manifest remain relatively under-examined. In particular there has been no explicit examination of the mediating role of cultural knowledge in the production of ideologically driven advertising. This paper invokes the panoptic metaphor to position the knowledge gathered by and on behalf of advertising agencies as a major dynamic in the production of consumer culture. The consumer of advertising is a known entity for advertising agencies: the subject is watched, filmed, questioned, recorded, and tracked. Indeed, consumer biography and subjectivity itself has become material that is both produced and consumed by advertising agencies in order to produce culturally constitutive advertising. The paper integrates disparate literatures to situate knowledge of consumer culture at the hub of advertising's constitutive ideological influence.     

Client Perceptions of the Customer Orientation of Advertising Agencies

Abstract

A national random sample of advertisers evaluated the customer orientation of their advertising agencies. The respondents also rated the importance of various agency attributes for agency selection, as well as their level of satisfaction with the performance of their current advertising agencies. Client perceptions of the customer orientation of advertising agencies was found to be significantly related to clients' satisfaction with agency performance. The importance of customer oriented selling behaviors by advertising agencies are discussed.     

Why we watch others' responses to online advertising – investigating users' motivations for viewing user-generated content in the context of online advertising

The study investigates Internet users' motivations for viewing user-generated content (UGC) in the context of online advertising. In addition, it is examined whether individual motivation patterns can be traced back to users' personalities and their attitudes toward advertising in general. An online survey of 181 social media users was conducted, surveying users' motivation, personality (big five), and attitude toward advertising in general. Path analysis was employed to examine the research model. The use of UGC was motivated by needs for information, entertainment, personal identity, and social interaction. While personality did not predict users' motives, their attitudes towards advertising in general explained individual motivation patterns to a large extent. It was consequently proposed and confirmed that users' motives mediate the influence of recipients' general attitude toward advertising on UGC usage. Results indicated a strong effective potential for UGC in online advertising: users view such content expressly to be influenced by others fulfilling their needs for information, personal identity and social interaction. Firms may lose some of their ability to precisely control brand messages when advertising in social media.     

Altered states: The effects of media and technology on the creative process in advertising agencies

The media environment has changed dramatically due to the explosion of new channels and technological innovations, which has had important ramifications not only for advertising, but also for advertising agencies and their creative processes. Using a series of interviews with agency creative directors and digital strategists, this study investigated how agencies have addressed these challenges and taken advantage of the opportunities. Its two key contributions are an updated model of the creative process and the identification of four alternative structures agencies use to create the core concept. The study also found a paradigm shift from framing technology in terms of its production value, to framing technology in terms of its strategic and creative value, as technology specialists have become involved in the strategic and creative stages of campaign development.     

A Comparison of Advertising Practices within the Accounting Profession

This article reports the findings of a survey among UK chartered accountancy firms on their promotional practices following the 1984 removal of advertising prohibitions in the profession. Specifically, it compares advertising practices between firms, using a typology of firms based on size of advertising budgets and use of advertising agencies. The financial resources devoted to advertising certainly influenced promotional activities. However, they were found to be no substitute for advertising agency expertise. Firms using advertising agencies had a more systematic approach to promotion; they were more likely to undertake pre-advertising research, segment their markets, make more varied and intensive use of media, and to evaluate their advertising. Firms with relatively large budgets which did not use advertising agencies tended to be less rigorous in their approach, showing little interest in crucial matters such as pre-advertising research and post-advertising evaluation.     

The Role of the Advertising Agency in the Cultural Message Content of Advertisements: A Comparison of the Middle East and the United States

ABSTRACT

This study compared responses of advertising agencies located in the Middle East and the United States to an email survey examining their approach in designing advertisements. The survey examined whether the advertising agency incorporated area-specific cultural values and advertising appeals in the execution of their advertisements. Results indicate that indeed advertising agencies do use, or at least report to use, different cultural values and advertising appeals. Advertising agencies in the Middle East tend to focus more on filial obedience, customs and traditions, loyalty to one's group, honor, and patience. In addition, agencies in the Middle East reported that they tended to portray women in a more modest fashion than their counterparts in the United States.     

Advertising effectiveness from a consumer perspective

Communication effectiveness research is moving away from investigations of advertising’s forms, content and the degree and type of consumer involvement, to a greater focus on the process of reception and the social and cultural roles that advertising plays in society and in individual lives. This shift in emphasis has been influenced by communication and media studies, which have prioritised the psychological, social and cultural contexts within which consumers relate to commercial information and the roles that advertising media play in their lives. The focus on the ‘receiver’ as the key actor in the advertising communication process has also coincided with increasing interest in consumer culture theory, brand communities and the new service dominant logic of marketing. This paper provides a useful perspective from which to view contemporary developments in advertising effectiveness research, and has important implications for future studies.     

Ad agencies

This article highlights advertising agencies as marketplace icons. The role of ad agencies in creating iconic brands can sometimes be obscured, yet ad agencies are central to how the contemporary marketplace works. While ad agencies are no longer the hegemonic instance of consumer culture that they were from the 1950s to the 1990s, they have adapted to today's democratic advertisingscape by shepherding cultural content produced elsewhere to market. Ad agencies have remained the engine behind significant shifts in consumer culture, such as the warming of relations between music and advertising, by acting as the ‘midwife’ between art and commerce, facilitating new cultural practices in the process.     

Mobile Advertising: An Empirical Study of Temporal and Spatial Differences in Search Behavior and Advertising Response

Using clickstream panel data from an automobile ad campaign conducted on a mobile platform, we investigate the relevance of mobile advertising, the interrelationships between ad content, information search behavior, and advertising response. Temporally, we compare mobile users' search behavior and advertising response before and during a focal campaign event of an automobile show. Spatially, we examine their search behavior and advertising response in relation to their proximity to the show's location. Estimation results from individual-user random effects binary Logit and Poisson count models show that users' responses to mobile advertising are related to the depth and breadth of search and the ad content. While informative and persuasive ad content exhibits differential non-linear effects on the depth and breadth of search, they have similar effects on advertising response. Interestingly, spatial and temporal proximity of mobile ad campaigns may not lead to increased relevance of mobile campaigns; it depends on the type of ad content and the type of measure used to assess relevance.     

The advertising creative process: A study of UK agencies

Advertising agencies are hired to develop creative advertising for their clients. This paper explores the advertising creative process used by agencies when developing new creative work. Using in-depth interviews with 21 agency practitioners in the UK this study examines the stages that take place within the advertising creative process. Findings suggest the process is made up of a series of sequentially linked stages and illustrate how agencies validate advertising creative during development. The study provides insight into how agencies customise the process and identifies that agencies have different approaches to the level of client involvement. Implications for practitioners are discussed and areas for future research identified.     

Viewer Preference Segmentation and Viewing Choice Models for Network Television

Abstract

Individual viewing decisions have a direct impact on the media planning of television advertisers and, consequently, on the revenues of the major television networks. This paper represents an attempt to better understand these decisions. We use Nielsen people meter data to build a perceptual space for programs. That space is then used to develop models explaining viewers' decision to watch television and their choice of programming. The program-choice model is a clusterwise logit model which searches for segments with similar viewing preferences. A segment-level logit model is then used to model the on-off decision. These models can be used by advertisers and advertising agencies to understand the viewing audience better, and thus to help guide their advertising media placement decisions. The models can also help television networks design programs and program schedules that are more attractive to viewers (and thus advertisers).     

Advertising Effectiveness Research: A Survey of Agencies,Clients and Conflicts

Pressure from clients is now forcing many, agencies to consider allocating resources to the development of effectiveness measures. Some agencies have for many years employed econometricians to develop rudimentary econometric models examining the relationship between advertising spends, campaign duration and sales volumes. For others, who believe that their major role is on the creative side, developing advertising campaigns and programmes which bring the brand to the consumers' attention and ultimately bring about purchase, there is a dilemma.     

Client influence and advertising standardization: a survey of ad agencies

With increased globalization of markets, the standardization of products, services, and promotion activities has streamlined the work performed by advertising agencies. In this study, managing directors of Australian and US advertising agencies were questioned about the extent their clients influence agency functions and the degree of standardization used. It was found that copywriting was the main service offered and the clients usually have a major influence on their services. As for those that handle multi-country campaigns, older agencies tend to be more involved in international markets, and there was some degree of standardizing of campaigns and creative work.     

Advertising Media Planning in Spain: Models and Current Usages

Advertising media planning has attracted considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. There is a clear dichotomy between the optimizing and the nonoptimizing approaches. We have reviewed the present state of the art of the mathematical media models. The purpose of this study was to examine the available models for media planning in Spain and to assess their usage. A postal survey was conducted among Spanish advertising agencies whose advertising expenditure in million pesetas was 521,000 in 1988.     

The Effect of the World Wide Web on Agency—Advertiser Relationships: Towards A Strategic Framework

Buffeted by the fragmentation of media and markets, the World Wide Web has started transforming the competitive landscape in the advertising industry. Increasingly, advertising agencies are forced to compete with in-house CIS/MIS departments, public relations agencies and computer graphic studios and boutiques for Web-related accounts. Vis-à-vis the immediacy of the challenge, agencies are forced to either broaden their business horizon to include all aspects of communications or to stay focused on their core business-making advertisements for traditional media. This article examines the possible effects of the World Wide Web on the blurring of boundaries in advertiser- agency performed promotional activities, analyses the similarities in the strategies adopted in the transition from radio to television, and appraises the options which agencies face in adopting the Web.