Advertising management is how a company carefully plans and controls its advertising to reach its

ideal customers and convince them to buy.[citation needed]

Marketers use different types of advertising.[1] 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.[citation needed]
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.[citation
needed]

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.[2]

A key characteristic of advertising is that it utilises mass media channels such as newspapers,
magazines, radio or TV to reach potential customers.

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".[3] 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".[4] 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".[5] 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."[6] One of the shortest definitions is that advertising is "a paid, mass-mediated
attempt to persuade".[7]

Several common themes emerge in the various definitions of advertising:[8]

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.[9]

Advertising and organisational responsibilities

Calvin Klein is one of a growing number of companies that uses an in-house agency for its advertising
and promotion.

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".[10] 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,[citation needed] Calvin Klein,[11]
Adobe, Dell, IBM, Kraft, Marriott and Wendy's.[12]

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.[13] In-house agencies deliver cost advantages, time efficiencies
and afford marketers greater control over the advertising effort.[14] 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.[15][16]

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

Customers rely on different types of marketing communications at different stages of their purchase
decision.

The promotional mix is the specific combination of promotional methods used for a brand, product
or family of products.[17] Advertising is best treated as a multiplier that can leverage other elements
of the promotional mix and marketing program.[18] Therefore, advertising must be considered as
part of a broader marketing and promotional program.

The promotional mix includes a variety of tools such as:

Sales promotion includes a variety of activities such as special price offers designed to stimulate
sales.

Advertising: messages paid for by those who send them and intended to inform or influence people
who receive them[19]

Branded entertainment: the dedicated production of content designed to display corporate or

branded messages in an entertaining format[20]
Public relations (PR): the practice of maintaining goodwill between an organisation and its
publics[21]

Personal selling: face-to-face selling in which a seller attempts to persuade a buyer to make a
purchase.[22]

Direct marketing: contacting and influencing carefully chosen prospects with means such as
telemarketing and direct mail[23]

Sponsorship: the act of providing money for a television or radio program, website, sports event, or
other activity usually in exchange for advertising or other form of promotion[24]

Product placement: the practice of supplying a product or service for display in feature films or
television programs[25]

Sales promotion / merchandising: activities designed to stimulate sales normally at the point-of-sale;
includes retail displays, product sampling, special price offers, shelf talkers, contests, giveaways,
promotional items, competitions and other methods[26]

Event marketing: a planned activity of designing or developing a themed activity, occasion, display, or
exhibit (such as a sporting event, music festival, fair, or concert) to promote a product, cause, or
organization.[27]

Exhibitions/trade shows: events or shows (e.g. fashion shows, agricultural shows) where companies
can display their wares or services[28]

The Vogue Fashion Show is a special event designed to promote top designers' seasonal collections.

Advertising is just one of many elements that comprise the promotional mix. When marketers
communicate with target markets across a broad range of different promotional types and media,
the potential for contradictory or mixed messages is very real. Accordingly, it is important that
advertising is treated as part of a total marketing communications program and that steps are taken
to ensure that it is integrated with all other marketing communications, so that all communications
messages speak with a 'single voice'. The process of ensuring message consistency across the entire
marketing communications program is known as integrated marketing communications.[29]

Mounting a display at a trade-fair or exhibition, such as the Hong Kong Food Show, is part of a
company's total promotional mix.

Marketers need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the elements in the
promotional mix in order to select the right blend for a given situation. For instance, public relations
allows for high credibility message delivery with relatively low costs, while advertising permits
message repetition. Advertising is especially useful for creating awareness, but personal channels
come into play for the actual purchase. The "right" promotional mix should consider both message
impact and message consistency.[30] In addition, decision-makers need to recognise that consumers
rely on different information sources at different stages of the purchase decision process. Therefore,
advertising and other elements of the promotional campaign must be integrated to ensure that
consumers receive the right messages via the right channels at the right time, depending on the
consumer's readiness to buy.

In terms of integrated communications, the literature identifies different types of integration: (1)
Image integration refers to messages that have a consistent look and feel, regardless of the medium;
(2) Functional integration refers to capacity of different promotional tools to complement each other
and deliver a unified, coherent message; (3) Coordinated integration refers to the ways that different
internal and external agencies (e.g. web designers, advertising agencies, PR consultants) coordinate
to provide a consistent message; (4) Stakeholder integration refers to the way that all stakeholders
such as employees, suppliers, customers and others cooperate to communicate a shared
understanding of the company's key messages and values and (5) Relationship integration refers to
the way that communications professionals contribute to the company's overall corporate goals and
quality management.[31]

On the surface, integrated marketing communications appear to be simple common sense. Yet, a
survey of brand advertisers carried out by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) revealed
that while 67 per cent of marketers engage in integrated marketing communications, just one third
are satisfied with their efforts.[32] In practice, integrating communications messages across a broad
range of promotional formats and media channels is very difficult to achieve.

Theories of advertising effects

Advertising messages are all around us, yet the mechanism which leads from exposure to brand
advertising through to sales is not entirely clear.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated a clear association between advertising and sales response.
[33] Yet the exact process that leads from the consumer of being exposed to an advertising message
through to a purchase or behavioral response is not entirely clear. Noting the difficulties in explaining
how advertising works, one theorist wrote, "Only the brave or ignorant...can say exactly what
advertising does in the marketplace."[34]

The advertising and marketing literature suggests a variety of different models to explain how
advertising works. These models are not competing theories, but rather explanations of how
advertising persuades or influences different types of consumers in different purchase contexts. In a
seminal paper, Vankratsas and Ambler surveyed more than 250 papers to develop a typology of
advertising models. They identified four broad classes of model: cognitive information models, pure
affect models, hierarchy of effect models, integrative models and hierarchy-free models.