Uses of ICT in Advertising

By H’MM

IntroductionAdvertising is used by many companies and organizations to promote their products or services. They have to pay a lot of money to advertising companies for the service. A variety of media are used for advertising, including billboards, cinema advertising, flyers, magazines, newspapers, posters, radio, the sides of buses, television programmes, video games and the worldwide web.

Many of these can be considered to be ICT media. Even those that are not considered to be directly ICT media such as magazines and newspapers also have versions available on the Internet and in that sense can be considered to be ICT media. Others such as flyers and posters are produced using ICT..

Types of Advertising

ProductAdvertisng

BusinessAdvertising

ServiceAdvertising

Types of Advertising

Product Advertising Product advertising is all about advertising one item: it

might be a specific model of car, but not the whole range of cars the company sells.

Whether the product is a soft drink, a chocolate bar, a computer or a car, the principles are the same. The target audience is identified and an advertising campaign that will appeal to that type of audience is created. The media is decided upon. This can be one medium such as newspaper advertising or a mixture of, say, television. newspaper and Internet advertising.

For example, if a new soft drink is being produced and it is felt that the drink will appeal more to younger children than teenagers or adults, the approach becomes clear: advertising in children's comics and on children's television channels.

Business Advertising In order for a business to become well known so that it can

make money it needs to advertise itself. Unlike product advertising, where only a single item is being advertised, business advertising seeks to make the company name familiar.

As for product advertising, the company needs to identify the type of customer that it wants to attract. For example, if it sells shoes that are mainly aimed at the wealthy, then it will want to advertise itself as an upmarket company. II will therefore advertise in magazines and newspapers read by the richer end of society.

Service Advertising The service industry involves, as its name implies, services rather than goods

being provided to the customer. Examples of service industries are:

• insurance• government• tourism• banking• education• social services.

The approach to advertising services is much the same as advertising businesses. However, some profit-making organizations will be prepared to spend a lot of

money on advertising in order to increase their profits. In contrast, government, social services and some aspects of education are not

profit-making and may spend just sufficient money on advertising so that people are aware of their existence. These public services tend to advertise on the television if they need to reach the whole population, whereas profit –making service providers tend to use a variety of advertising media .

Methods of Advertising

Methods of Advertising

Websites

Advertising on other websites

Getting into an online directory

Multimedia presentations

Flyers

Posters