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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising management | 1/11 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_management | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:17:26.704627+00:00 | kb-cron |
Advertising management is how a company carefully plans and controls its advertising to reach its ideal customers and convince them to buy. Marketers use different types of advertising. Brand advertising is defined as a non-personal communication message placed in a paid, mass medium designed to persuade target consumers of a product or service benefits in an effort to induce them to make a purchase. Corporate advertising refers to paid messages designed to communicate the corporation's values to influence public opinion. Yet other types of advertising such as not-for-profit advertising and political advertising present special challenges that require different strategies and approaches. Advertising management is a complex process that involves making many layered decisions including developing advertising strategies, setting an advertising budget, setting advertising objectives, determining the target market, media strategy (which involves media planning), developing the message strategy, and evaluating the overall effectiveness of the advertising effort.) Advertising management may also involve media buying. Advertising management is a complex process. However, at its simplest level, advertising management can be reduced to four key decision areas:
Target audience definition: Who do we want to talk to? Message (or creative) strategy: What do we want to say to them? Media strategy: How will we reach them? Measuring advertising effectiveness: How do we know our messages were received in the form intended and with the desired outcomes?
== Advertising and advertising management: definitions == Consumers tend to think that all forms of commercial promotion constitute advertising. However, in marketing and advertising, the term "advertising" has a very special meaning that reflects its status as a distinct type of promotion.
The marketing and advertising literature has many different definitions of advertising, but it is possible to identify common elements or themes within most of these definitions. The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines advertising as "the placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas". The American Heritage Dictionary defines advertising as "the activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media". Selected marketing scholars have defined advertising in the following terms: "any non-personal communication that is paid for by an identified sponsor, and involves either mass communication viz newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and other media (e.g., billboards, bus stop signage) or direct to-consumer communication via direct mail". and "the element of the marketing communications mix that is non-personal, paid for by an identified sponsor, and disseminated through mass channels of communication to promote the adoption of goods, services, persons, or ideas." One of the shortest definitions is that advertising is "a paid, mass-mediated attempt to persuade". Several common themes emerge in the various definitions of advertising:
Advertising is a paid form of communication and is therefore commercial. Advertising employs non-personal channels (i.e. commercial mass media) which implies that it is directed at a mass audience rather than at an individual consumer and is a one-way communication mode where the sponsor sends messages, but recipients cannot respond or ask questions about the message content. Advertising has an identified sponsor. In summary, given that advertising is paid, it is one of the many controllable elements in the marketing program. Advertising is qualitatively different from publicity where the message sponsor is either not identified or ambiguously defined, and different from personal selling which occurs in real-time and involves some face-to-face contact between the message sponsor and recipient allowing for two-way dialogue. While advertising refers to the advertising message, per se, advertising management refers to the process of planning and executing an advertising campaign or campaigns; that is, it is a series of planned decisions that begins with market research continues through to setting advertising budgets, developing advertising objectives, executing the creative messages and follows up with efforts to measure the extent to which objectives were achieved and evaluate the cost-benefit of the overall advertising effort.
== Advertising and organisational responsibilities ==
In commercial organisations, advertising, along with other marketing communications activities, is the ultimate responsibility of the marketing department. Some companies outsource part or all of the work to specialists such as advertising agencies, creative design teams, web designers, media buyers, events management specialists or other relevant service providers. Another option is for a company to carry out most or all of the advertising functions within the marketing department in what is known as an in-house agency. By definition, an in-house agency is "an advertising organization that is owned and operated by the corporation it serves". Its mission is to provide advertising services in support of its parent company's business and marketing objectives. Well-known brands that currently use in-house agencies include Google, Calvin Klein, Adobe, Dell, IBM, Kraft, Marriott and Wendy's. Both in-house agencies and outsourcing models have their own advantages and disadvantages. Outsourcing to an external agency allows marketers to obtain highly specialised strategic, research and planning skills, access to top creative talent and provides an independent perspective on marketing or advertising problems. In-house agencies deliver cost advantages, time efficiencies and afford marketers greater control over the advertising effort. In addition, personnel who work within an in-house agency gain considerable creative experience which stays within the company. Recent trends suggest that the number of in-house agencies is rising. Whether a company chooses to outsource advertising functions to an external agency or carry them out within the marketing department, marketers need a rich understanding of advertising principles in order to prepare effective advertising plans, brief relevant agencies about their needs and expectations or develop their own creative solutions to marketing problems.
== Advertising's role in the promotional mix ==