28/06/2025
What Is an Advertisement?
Advertisements come in many forms, each with its own level of effectiveness for different audiences. Many companies use several types of advertisements to reach a wider group of potential consumers. It can be helpful to learn about the different types of advertisements and what makes them successful to create an engaging marketing campaign.
In this article, I will explain what an advertisement is, common advertising goals, what makes an advertisement successful and the different types to consider implementing.
What is an advertisement?
An advertisement is a form of promotion for a brand, product or service. Often, companies use advertisements to entice people to purchase or use that brand, product or service. Advertisements can also accomplish the following:
Raise awareness about an issue
Campaign for a political candidate
Engage public interest for an event
What are the goals of advertising?
Having a specific goal can help you create an effective advertising campaign. Companies often create advertisements with the goal of:
Improving awareness: An advertising campaign can focus on introducing a new group of prospective customers to a brand or idea, rather than selling those individuals a particular product. Once these individuals are aware of the brand, they may be more likely to purchase from it in the future.
Encouraging action: Many advertising campaigns focus on encouraging consumers to take actions like learning more about or purchasing a product or service. This can increase company profit through sales.
Beginning conversations: Some advertisements intentionally evoke conversation through a shocking statement or a controversial message. This can cause individuals to engage with the brand on a new level and expand brand awareness by discussing it with their friends.
Changing perceptions: Marketers may use an advertising campaign to try to change public perception of a brand or topic. This can help organisations keep up-to-date with current public opinion and evolve over time.
What makes an advertisement successful?
There are various factors that make an advertisement successful, including:
It resonates with its audience. A successful advertisement uses a universal truth or a common experience to engage the audience on an emotional level. The advertisement introduces the product or service as a way to address that experience.
It's memorable. Either through the choice of images or a unique way of presenting the information, the audience remembers the product or service and the brand. They may even find their peers discussing it at work or on social media.
It distinguishes this product from its competitors. The advertisement may mention competitors by name, or it may reference competitors indirectly. Either way, audiences can clearly see how this product differs from others in the same market.
It focuses attention on the benefits. A good advertisement makes sure the consumer understands how they benefit from the product or service. For example, it may explain how the product or service is of high quality at a low cost or how it can make life easier.
It has a distinctive branding style. Creating brand recognition with a distinctive logo or product design is an important feature of good advertising. Audiences should be able to recognise the company or the product simply from the advertisement's branding.
It has well-written copy or a good script. Depending on the type, the advertisement should include writing that's clear, concise, creative and compelling. It should speak to the consumer in a language they understand and make its point quickly and powerfully.
It has a call to action. A successful advertisement may both tell the audience about the product or service and encourage them to do something. Examples of calls to action include instructions to call a number, go to a website or visit a store.
7 types of advertisements
Understanding the various types of advertisements can help you combine different strategies into a single campaign. The following are some popular types of advertisements:
1. Print advertisements
Print advertisements are one of the oldest forms of advertising and are still in use today, though internet and digital advertising are more prominent. You can find print advertisements in a number of different places, including the following:
Magazines: This type of advertising can reach a very specific audience depending on the type of magazine in which the advertiser publishes.
Newspapers: While newspapers may limit a company to a local demographic, it's often a relatively inexpensive advertising option.
Brochures: Brochures can be a useful way to convey detailed information. You can also reach a wide audience by distributing brochures in a variety of settings.
Flyers: Like brochures, flyers are easy to distribute. Unlike brochures, flyers may be better at capturing viewer attention and conveying a simple message.
Direct mail: Sending mail directly to a potential customer's mailbox can be a good way to market to a lot of people in a specific area.
2. Outdoor advertisements
Outdoor advertisements, or out-of-home advertisements, are the kind consumers see when they're outside their homes. Some businesses set up events in outdoor venues to promote their products, such as offering food samples or hiring people to dress in costume and distribute flyers. Other common outdoor advertisements include billboards and ads in the following places:
Highway sidelines
Building facades
Bus shelters
Cars or buses
Park benches
Movie theatres
The key to successful outdoor advertising is being able to capture people's attention quickly with a message or image that they're likely to remember. A billboard, for example, may function best when it can communicate its message in a clear and interesting way in just the few seconds that a driver might look at it before driving onward. A poster-sized advertisement in a bus shelter might benefit from being memorable so a person won't forget it while they're on the bus or at home.
3. Guerilla advertisements
Guerilla advertising is a form of outdoor advertisement that uses unconventional venues or methods to promote a product or service. The objective of guerilla advertising is to attract attention and be memorable. You can achieve this by placing advertisements in unusual places or creating advertising that shocks or surprises your audience. Examples of guerilla advertising include:
Chalk drawings on a sidewalk or wall
Spray painted graffiti on a wall
A flash mob performing a product-related song or sketch
An advantage of guerilla advertising is it can generate conversation on local news broadcasts or social media. This kind of attention increases the reach of the advertising beyond its initial outdoor venue.
4. Radio advertisements
Radio advertising is when you pay a radio station to play an advertisement for a product or service during breaks in its scheduled programming. This can be an effective way to advertise since many people listen to the radio during commutes to and from work, while running errands or during their workday. The station could advertise multiple times during the day. This kind of repetition makes the advertisement more memorable.
There are different kinds of radio advertisement, including:
A song or jingle: This is where an advertiser makes the company message or tag line into a memorable tune.
A straight read: Straight reads employ one or more voice actors and possibly music and sound effects to convey an advertisement.
A live read: Live reads are where the DJ reads an advertisement from a script in real-time during their show.
Sponsorships: Organisations can sponsor a popular segment of a broadcast, such as the weather, the news or a competition. At the beginning of the segment, the host names that organisation as the sponsor.
5. Television advertisements
Despite the growth of the internet, many people still watch broadcast and cable television, making it an effective way to advertise a product or service. A television advertisement placed during a popular program can reach a wide audience. An advantage that television has over the radio is it combines both audio and video. This means you can also engage your audience visually, increasing the chance they might remember your advertisement.
Creating a television advertisement may require a bigger budget than other advertising strategies. If your primary market is local, you can save money by advertising only on local television. Though it can be expensive, television advertising may be worthwhile if you can create an advertisement that's visually captivating and easy to remember. Part of the expenses for this type of advertising relate to paying the following contributors:
Scriptwriters
Actors
A director
A camera crew
Editors
An advertising agency
6. Product placement advertisements
If you're watching a show and most characters seem to use the same brand of laptop or drive cars made by the same company, this may be product placement. Product placement involves the advertiser paying the producers of the show to incorporate a product naturally into the script. Advertisers can use product placement, or embedded marketing, in the following mediums:
Television shows
Movies
Live performances
Social media
The product placement might be done explicitly, with the brand name clearly in view, or implicitly by using the brand's color scheme or design on a similar-looking product. Although the product is not the focus of the show, the audience may remember seeing the product. If they like the show, this may help improve their attitude toward the product.
7. Internet advertisements
Internet advertising takes advantage of the internet and popular social media outlets to promote products, services or other websites or social media platforms. You can have a simple banner ad that displays on a webpage, or you can have pop-up ads that appear when someone visits the site.
Here are some internet advertisement models to consider:
Cost per mile: Also known as cost per thousand, the cost of an advertisement with this model depends on how many thousands of impressions, or views, it receives.
Cost per click: In this model, the amount the advertiser pays the host website depends on the number of times someone clicks on the advertisement.
Cost per action: With cost per action, the cost of advertising is relates to the number of times visitors perform a specific action, such as making a purchase or submitting a form.
Email advertising is another way of using the internet to let people know about your product or service. You can also place advertisements on popular social media sites. This has the advantage of being able to leverage the social media platform's knowledge of its users to target your advertisement to those most likely to be interested.
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