LO2 revision summary

LO2: Understand how media products are advertised and distributed.

There are many different ways of advertising a media product and many of them evolved throughout history due to the invention of the internet and social media. However, nowadays most new releases in the media industry use a combination of traditional and digital methods to get the word out to the widest amount of people possible.

Here are some examples that companies use to advertise their products...

• Billboards

• Posters

• Product placement

• Street advertising

• Celebrity endorsement/paid promotions

• Leaflets

• Online ads (YouTube, Pop ups, banners, etc.)

• Industry press

• Social media ads (targeted on feeds)

• Magazine/Newspaper adverts

• Radio adverts

• Trailers on TV and YouTube

These forms of advertisement target audiences in different ways. Some are forms of above the line marketing and some are below the line marketing.

Above the line: Mass media is used to promote brands and tries to target the widest amount of consumers as possible, for it is not specific to individual consumers. This type of marketing includes many traditional methods of advertising such as ads on broadcast media (TV and radio), print media and the internet. Basically anything that is viewed by a mass amount of people at once.

Below the line: This kind of marketing is more personal and specific to the consumer. It usually only targets one person at a time, such as the distribution of leaflets, product demonstrations and in the era of web 2.0, promotions directly to the person's social media feed and through newsletters and mailing lists.

The face of advertising has changed drastically since the rise of Web 2.0. Before Web 2.0, the internet was mostly used as a platform for passively viewing content, but now it is a collaborative space where we can both share and consume media. This has paved the way for digital advertising because social media sites use below the line advertising to target more specific groups of people. Here are some ways that digital advertising tailor their ads to a certain audience...

• Sites such as Facebook try to make their advertisements relevant to the consumer by basing them off of their web history, tailoring products to known interests, skills and activities that are of interest to the account in use.

• Amazon recommend products to the consumer via banners titled "People have also purchased..." or "If you liked this, you may also like...", which are based of the persons recent behaviour on the site.

• Showing them what similar people have "liked" or have enjoyed, with the theory that if they see that someone that they follow or are friends with online, it will influence them to consume similar things.

Media companies will often use synergy to promote and distribute a product or service, usually through both digital and traditional means. Synergy is when companies work together for mutual benefit. A company can also work with other companies that it owns to promote a product.

Synergy is allowed by cross media ownership which is when a brand has ownership of companies in various different areas of the media industry, giving them an increased reach. They can use the companies that they own to advertise a product instead of looking elsewhere.

Technological convergence has changed the way that many media products are distributed for as technology advances, the way we consume media changes. Technological convergence is when multiple media platforms are integrated into a single piece of technology, increasing the amount of functions it can perform for the user. For example, we can now listen to music, watch TV and movies, play games, read magazines and listen to the radio all on our smartphones. Our consumption of media is becoming almost exclusively digital, for it is more convenient for the consumer and it uses up less resources than having a physical product.

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