The Cost of Advertisement

The cost of advertising hugely varies from the type of media, popularity, length and the time of day. Advertising on television is the most expensive form of advertising, the average budget for a 30 second commercial costing around £140,000. The cost of TV advertising varies by month depending on the number of people watching and the amount of money being invested each month. A good indication of how pricing rates change throughout the year is the ITV station price, the graph below illustrates the pricing through the years of 2009 and 2010.

Radio advertising is one of the more cheaper alternatives to media advertising, the average advert on a small station costing around £200-£300. Upon researching I used 'Signal Radio' as an example of a local radio station that I may use when advertising our product. Statistics how that '90% of the adult population listen to radio every week in Staffordshire and Cheshire' where '46% say they listen everyday' and '66% listen in the car'. These figures make up around 328,000 adults in Staffordshire and Cheshire that would potentially be listening to our advert. I think that using local radio to advertise a new product is a great way to get started, as it's cheap and very effective. The image below shows the combined total of market advertising from 'Signal 1' and 'Signal 2' radio.

Regulations of Advertisements

"The ASA is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media, now including marketing on websites. We work to ensure ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes."

Advertisement is everywhere, on television, radio, internet, smartphones, newspapers/magazines, billboards, bus stops and so much more. It's hard for anyone to escape the vast variety of advertisement, therefore this can lead to misleading, offending or distressing certain individuals. This results in why the Advertising Standards Authority has been put in place, to regulate any adverts that may be deemed 'inappropriate'.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regulates the following forms of advertisements:

• Magazine and newspaper advertisements 
• Radio and TV commercials (not programmes or programme sponsorship) 
• Television Shopping Channels 
• Posters on legitimate poster sites (not fly posters) 
• Leaflets and brochures 
• Cinema commercials 
• Direct mail (advertising sent through the post and addressed to you personally) 
• Door drops and circulars (advertising posted through the letter box without your name on) 
• Advertisements on the Internet, including banner and display ads and paid-for (sponsored) search 
• Marketing communications on companies’ own websites and in other, non-paid-for space under their own control  
• Commercial e-mail and SMS text message ads 
• Ads on CD ROMs, DVD and video, and faxes
• We regulate sales promotions, such as special offers, prize draws and competitions wherever they appear.

The Codes and Conventions of Advertisement

Codes and Conventions:

• Using a celebrity to sell/promote the product - 'Michael Jackson Pepsi Commercial"
• Unusual approach - "Cadbury Gorilla Advert"
• Continuas showing of brand name/product
• Using a popular song - "Morrison's, Take That-Shine"
• Catch tag lines or slogans - "Frosties, They're Great"
• Using guilt, life insurance - "Don't leave loved ones without anything"
• Creating mini series - "BT Cencon"
• Shot Styles - "Close up shots are used on people in charity adverts"

Advertisers want to leave behind a legacy for their viewers, they want everyone talking and sharing the word about their product. By having a very unusual approach to an advert will more likely have people talking about it, such as - "did you see that weird cadbury advert with the gorilla?" As the advert is completely different to your 'average' advert, it sticks in the consumers mind and ultimately sells more of the product. This Cadbury gorilla advert helped to increase annual sales for Cadbury by up to 5%. Another example of how codes and conventions stick in a consumers mind, is a catchy song. A song may stick in a viewers mind, constantly reminding them of the product that's been advertised. Overall each of these codes and conventions help the consumer remember exactly what the product is and what has been advertised. 

The Way Modern Technology is Affecting Advertisement

Since the UK's digital television switchover, DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) have become increasingly popular, allowing the user to record televisions programs and watch them at a later date. The UK's most popular from of DVR devices are Sky+ and Virgin+, allowing the user the option to record a television program and then the ability to skip the advertisements. A report from the 'Guardian' suggests that 86% of TV viewers throughout the UK skip advertisements via their digital TV recorder. The image below is an example of a Sky+ planner where a user has recorded a list of programs which can be watched at any time.

Within the last two years, online TV catch up services have become extremely popular, such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD, ITV Player, etc. By incorporating these services not only on the computer, but on TV, game consoles, smartphones, and tablets, they have managed to expand catch up TV to a much wider audience. However, TV catch up services have little to none advertising, which results in advertisers searching for new ways to distribute their product. The image below shows the layout to the most popular catch up service, BBC iPlayer, where the user can watch any BBC programs that they may have missed from the previous week.

Audience Theories

Reception Theory/Audience Reception

"Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes the reader's reception of a literary text. It is more generally called audience reception. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall is one of the main proponents of reception theory. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience. This means that a "text"- be it a book, movie, or other creative work - is not simply passively accepted by the audience, but that the reader / viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. In other words, the meaning of the text is created within the relationship between the text and the viewer/reader."

Applying this theory to our advertisement would involve us relating the campaign to the viewer, so it is easily understood. The sports drinks that I have previously analysed, all clearly state the effects of the product, once the consumer has taken it. This is a common occurrence in many sports drink advertisements, so this will have to be considered upon producing ours.  

The Hypodermic Needle Model

"Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. As the picture suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. This theory was developed in an age where mass media was a fairly new phenomenon - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience, i.e the intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers."

As our product falls in the mass market category, it is likely to be consumed by a large proportion of people, regardless of their opinion and intelligence. This would also suggest that this theory relates to our product, as we don't have to be too informative, or complicated.