Advertising Management Assignment: How Digital Media Is Overtaking Traditional Marketing?
Question
Task:
The rise of digital media in recent years has created a high level of interest across businesses wishing to take advantage of the media platforms. This creates a belief that traditional media platforms – such as television or billboards - are no longer effective for advertising campaigns. Based on what you have learned about how brands grow and aspects that are important for media planning and buying, please address the following aspects in your advertising management assignment:
- Give an overview of the media environment – specifically in Australia as well as globally with regards to traditional vs. digital media. Select a different country as a comparison (e.g. China, India, USA and UK).
- Critique the pros and cons about advertising through digital media vs. traditional media. You may want to include information such as the metrics used, the cost involved, as well as elements of consumer behaviour that you have learned previously.
- Consider the following scenarios, and provide the pros and cons of both situations:
- Allocating all media budget towards digital media platforms and not advertising on traditional media.
- Ignoring any digital media for advertising – and focusing only on traditional media.
- Lastly, propose a decision framework for a marketer to utilize when choosing between the media options on offer for inclusion in their media campaign. What are the key characteristics of media that a marketer needs to consider?
- 5. 5. Using the decision framework that you formulate above, please give an example how these media choices may differ for example, for: (pick one pair to focus on)
- Footwear v home automation
- Car v toothpaste
- Wine v mortgage broker
Answer
Introduction
It is seen herein advertising management assignment that companies around the world have started to use digital media for most operations related to business campaigns, promotion, or advertising the organizations and their products and services. The modern business world is living in an epoch where the rise in digital media has helped companies to break down barriers of communication as well as seeking and consuming information. The media revolution that came with the likes of Facebook and Twitter has made disseminating the information to anywhere in the world and to anybody is effectively used by the business, which has resulted in the neglect of traditional media platforms as they are not able to adapt to the current pace of the business world and its competitiveness. Traditional media platforms have always been referred to as a medium for outbound marketing as it is only capable of sending out the information to the customers whereas digital media platforms, on the other hand, has the ability of not only send out the information but also exchange it in multiple forms. This is also one of the reasons behind the decline in the use of traditional media platforms as they have rapidly lost their touch. Television was one of the biggest traditional media platforms used in various parts of the world, and it still remains one of the biggest advertising mediums. However, it is now more inclined toward digital media and cannot be taken as a medium of traditional media platforms because of how they are incorporated with smart technologies.
1. Overview of the media environment
Ranging from the very burgeoning size of various digital platforms and subscribing to a number of current weekly affairs, the media environment has completely changed, and now the audience is in the driver's seat. This is because of how advent digital media has become and the facilities of hyper-speed internet connections which has forced the powerhouses of the traditional media platforms to fight off these media platforms as there are disrupting their environment. The media environment today has been taken over by mobile technologies and replaced many important aspects of people’s lives. Now from making a single purchase to keeping in check with various events from around the world or even connecting with our friends and families, the mobile phone has it all. Scrolling through the news feed and clearing each and every notification, which we couldn't even fathom before a decade or two, has not become our second nature and the most important task throughout the day. This has led to people consuming more information but with very little attention as the amount of information available at just their fingertips has become limitless (Munawar, 2019).
The biggest medium for advertisement, which is television, has also gone through its evolution which has entirely changed the media environment. The current televisions are all digital now compared to what it was before which has made it smart enough to store and stream the contents. Even the form of advertising has completely changed as it now comes today with the content itself. The audience now has much greater control over what they want to watch and when. They even have control over advertisements as they can control whether they want to watch them or not. Therefore, digital media is more or less replacing traditional media, and this is visible in every part of the world. The current media environment can also be characterized as everything is in memory. This is because the media environment today remembers each and everything with perfect fidelity. Whether it be the email that one has written or an old friend that appears on social media platforms, they are all there as if they were never left behind. All these facilities are what causesdigital media to triumph over traditional media platforms as they make each and everything much easier for people (Forbes, 2019).
Media Environment in Australia and its comparison with India
Australia has gone tremendous change in its readership patterns in the past couple of years as media and journalism industries are trending. TV remains one of the biggest advertisement mediums in Australia as there are more than 22.3 million Australians watching broadcast TV. However, this comes as a considerably smaller number if compared to India as there are more than 780 million individuals watching television which is much more than Australia. Pay-TV has also experienced tremendous growth in Australia, which is mostly dominated by the streaming service like Netflix and Stan who uses subscriptions above advertisement as a means of their income model. Though the number of individuals watching television in India is more compare to Australia, Pay TV hasn't found as much success in the country as Australia despite the tremendous increase in TV and mobile phone penetration within the country (Thakkar, 2019).
Number of users of paid television services in Australia as of October 2019
Source: (Hughes, 2021)
Radio which is one of the oldest media of traditional media platforms, has become much more mobile and adapted to the change-taking place in the media environment through its revolution and changing into podcasts that have succeeded in attracting audiences towards it in Australia. Broadcast radio still reaches 99% of the Indian population; therefore, the radio has no need for revolution within the traditional medium. This is all because of how cheap the radio set has become and also because it surmounts the literacy barriers (The Hindu, 2018).
The readership pattern in Australia has also gone through a tremendous change as magazines and newspapers are being replaced by the speeding trend in the media and journalism industry. Australia is seeing a vast majority of people migrating towards online publications as media conglomerates are recording high turnover in terms of both revenues and professionals related to the industry. This has lead to the decline of magazines and publications of newspapers as these online publications are much mobile and cost-effective for the audiences.
2. The pros and cons about advertising through digital media vs. traditional media:
Marketing plays a vital role in the success of a business, no matter what type of business it is. Advertising introduces the product, which can either be goods or services, into the market. Advertisement can be done in two ways, and both ways have their individual pros and cons. These pros and cons have been discussed in the table below. Understanding the pros and cons of digital and traditional advertisements will help the business entity to make a proper decision regarding the media in which to undertake the advertisement campaign for the product. Mediums for traditional advertising media include television, radio, newspapers, magazines, flyers, and billboards, while the medium for digital advertising media includes search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, display advertisements, social media marketing, video hosting sites, etc.
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Traditional advertising media |
Digital advertising media |
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Cost: Advertising through traditional media like an advertisement in television, newspaper or magazine is quite expensive. |
Cost: On the other hand, digital platforms provide opportunities for minimum spending on the promotion of a product. Managing SEO and SEM is also usually less expensive as compared to traditional advertising media. |
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Coverage/Size of Audience: Television has extensive coverage in terms of its audience, while newspapers and magazines have relatively lesser coverage. These media, however, prove to be very efficient in terms of advertising products even in the most remote places. Radio, although going out of use in most parts, is still a reliable medium for advertisement, especially in areas that lack proper internet connectivity. |
Coverage/Size of Audience: The internet provides a large platform for advertisement, and the audience coverage can be considered, more or less, worldwide. The only exception for this media of advertisement is the areas that lack internet connectivity and knowledge about these platforms. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have millions of users every day who act as audiences for several advertisements. |
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Metrics: Traditional media of advertising prove weak in terms of metrics evaluation. There is no concrete method to ascertain the ROI (Return on Investment) of the advertisement in the case of traditional media. |
Metrics: Digital media provides the advertiser with multiple options to track and manage the performance of the advertisement of the product. Observation of Key Performance Indicators (KIPs) like Web traffic sources, Brand awareness, purchase funnel, etc., can ascertain the success of the marketing campaign. |
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Engagement: There is a lesser scope of intimate engagement and communication in this method of advertisement. The audience has fewer options to provide feedbacks and enquire regarding the products in this medium of advertisement. |
Engagement: Digital advertising provides opportunities to the consumers to ask questions and provide feedback to the business owners in real-time. This communication plays a vital role in creating a good relationship between the seller and buyer, thus, improving the chances of success of the product. Engagement with the consumer also helps the sellers and business owners to better understand consumer behavior, which plays an important role in marketing (Rao, 2016). |
3. A. Pros and cons in case of all media budget being allocated to the digital media platform
The choice of media for advertising is a crucial step towards successful marketing. After the choice of the media for marketing, the budget for advertisement is also allocated accordingly. In today's market, following the traditional advertisement method alone will not be sufficient to bring huge success to the marketing campaign. Digital marketing is essential for the success of any marketing campaign today, aligning with the consumer's digital activity. However, the given case scenario where the entire budget is directed towards digital marketing is also not entirely correct. This case also has some prominent pros and cons that can be pointed out.
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Pros |
Cons |
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In terms of budget and expenses, digital advertising media is much more efficient as digital marketing is much more cost-friendly than traditional advertising media. In Australia, depending on the time slot of the advertisement and the channel, the thirty-second advertisement on television can cost from $300 to more than $37,000 (Khor, 2019). Advertising in newspapers and magazine also starts at a minimum of about $600 and increases depending on the coverage of the newspaper/magazine, the day of printing/issuing, and the size of the advertisement (Huang, 2012). While on the other hand, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are free to build a public profile and market the products. In this respect, therefore, digital media has an advantage over traditional media of advertisement.
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Although this advertising media is much more cost-efficient, not all the products are appropriate for complete digital marketing. Not all the population are aware of digital marketing and are unable to access digital platforms, which greatly limits the campaign's audience coverage. For example, products targeting the elderly or the section of the market that is not well-updated with the technological developments and are unaware of digital marketing will not be included in the marketing campaign that is solely reliant on the digital media. |
3.B. Pros and cons in case of all media budget being allocated to traditional advertising media
The second case scenario is the reverse of the first one, and the negative impact on the business, in such a case, is much greater than the first one, especially in a global business scenario. The table below provides the pros and cons of allocating the entire budget towards traditional advertising media and ignoring digital advertising media.
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Pros |
Cons |
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Although expensive, traditional advertising media are much more adamant in delivering the message that they carry and, therefore, is worth the investment put into it. Unlike millions of advertisements online that people look at and forget, advertisements on billboards and the newspapers and televisions are difficult to ignore. They are more likely to leave a greater impact on the audience than online advertisements. Also, people are more used to traditional advertisements and have developed a sense of trust in them, while millions of online ads and claims and a relatively greater number of frauds make it difficult for many to trust them. |
Traditional advertising is much more expensive than digital marketing, as mentioned above. This implies that the budget in which several digital marketing campaigns could be undertaken over a certain period of time, only a few advertisements can be produced in the traditional advertising media. |
4. Decision Framework
The decision frameworks help the marketers enhance their decision-making process through the provision of conceptual structures as well as the principles for integrating the social, economic, ecological as well as institutional dimensions of decisions. Therefore, marketers can always rely on the following framework for choosing a media option to include them in their media campaign.
Generation of alternative
The two alternatives present in the current situation are digital media marketing platform which uses social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and traditional media marketing platform which uses television, billboard, newspaper, etc. Though both of the platforms does similar work of reaching customers and making them aware of either product, services, or brands and organizations, their approach is entirely different from one another. Therefore, it is imperative for the marketer to understand which platform might work in his best interest or help in achieving his desired results. One platform will always come on top of the other, and this may tend to vary according to the situation as one may be effective in one case and ineffective in the other and vice versa.
Information Gathering
It is extremely crucial to gather each and every piece of information before making any decision, even in the case of choosing the best media option for the campaign. So as mentioned above, traditional marketing is an outbound marketing platform as it can be used only to send messages to the audience and does not possess the ability to communicate with them. Traditional marketing poses the minimal potential of interaction between the brands and consumers and also since most of the people skip the advertisement which serves as marketing content whether it be in television, newspapers, or radio and magazines are skipped by the audience. On the other hand, digital media platform gives us the chance of directly addressing the audience as well as interacting them, but the reliance on digital media platform will also avoid a significant number of customers who may not be internet savvy or may not have the time for it. Therefore this is the information that needs to be kept in mind while analyzing the two platforms for marketing.
Identification of barriers
Another important element before making any decisions by the marketer is the barrier to both digital and traditional platforms.
Digital Platform
- The digital platform will help in standing out in a global platform which may seem as its greatest benefit; however, it's the competition on a global level that brings the biggest downside to the platform. It can prove to be a challenge for any marketer to go out against some of the biggest competitors and attract attention among the various messages that are being aimed at the audience.
- Complaints and feedback: It is important that the marketer be aware of the fact that anyonline reviews and complaints on the brand or the product or service that the marketer is promoting are all visible to every audience. Standing up to the audience's expectation can be challenging, and any negative comments or failures, in this case, can damage the reputation of the brand.
Traditional Platform
- Traditional marketing is much expensive as the total cost of production, and the media buy can come to a really big figure. The number of audiences it may be able to reach is also less compared to how much of an investment one needs to make on them (Liu, 2020).
- One of the biggest barriers of the traditional platform is that it is gradually losing its audience. The marketer needs to consider the fact that who is watching TV and reading newspapers these days when everything is available online. Even traditional media outlets recognize the problem and are learning to adjust according to the trend of the audience of the new generations.
Decision-making
Lastly, the marketer can make decisions after careful analysis of factors that are discussed above and choose a platform that will function the best according to the campaign. The marketer also needs to consider the following characteristic before he makes his decision.
Key characteristics of Media that marketer needs to consider
Interactivity: The ability to communicate with the audience can prove to be game changing for the campaign. Traditional media is a one-way communication platform and can only be used to send a message, digital media on the other hand can be used effectively by both the parties to communicate with one another.
Reach: Marketer needs to consider which form of media will effectively reach his target audience and how fast can it reach them.
Influence: Another characteristic that needs to be considered is the ability of the media to influence the audience. Some audiences are most likely to be influenced by the contents that are available in the social media and if it is trending compared to what is advertised in the TV.
Cost: Lastly, a subtle but important characteristic that plays a great role in the campaign is the cost-effectiveness of the media chosen by the marketer.
5. Difference in media choices in the case of footwear and home automation
Footwear: The best media choice in the case of footwear will probably be a digital media platform. This is because of how the audience is influenced by the footwear marketed on digital media platforms. The selection is also in the context that the target audience for footwear is already using digital media as there are numerous websites and pages on Facebook and Instagram that promote and markets footwear.
Home automation: The best media choice in the case of home automation will be a digital media platform through magazine and TV ads. Magazines and TV serve as an ideal marketing medium for home automation as it is better at reaching certain audiences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that the media environment has been seeing tremendous change, which has been mostly positive for the audience and the marketers. This is because communication between the audience and the market or companies around the world has become much easier due to the new innovative marketing media in the form of social media. Traditional marketing is slowly fading away due to the lack of flexibility and effectiveness in communicating with the audiences. The media environment is seeing the trend of digital media all around the globe, and countries like Australia and India are always taking extensive measures in keeping up with the global trend. Both the platform of digital and traditional marketing platforms contain various advantages and disadvantages which can be used by the marketer according to the needs of the campaign. Lastly, though traditional marketing has various setbacks compared to digital marketing, it has yet to become obsolete and can still be used to reach certain audiences where digital marketing fails to reach.
References
Forbes (2019).How Does Today’s Digital Media Environment Influence The Way We Behave? [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/01/23/how-does-todays-digital-media-environment-influence-the-way-we-behave/?sh=52801aa3d56d [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Huang, W. (2012).How To Actually Measure The Cost Of Print Advertising? [online] SavvySME. Available at: https://www.savvysme.com.au/article/6-how-to-measure-the-cost-of-print-advertising [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Khor, P. (2019). Does anyone know how much TV advertising costs? [online] SavvySME. Available at: https://www.savvysme.com.au/question/9-how-much-does-tv-advertising-cost [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Liu, R. (2020). Why Traditional Marketing Is Still Important Today. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/cornertechandmarketing/why-traditional-marketing-is-still-important-today-9fa6da1cd4b5 [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Munawar, A. (2019). Australian Media Landscape: Players, Influence, and Power. [online] Meltwater. Available at: https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/australian-media-landscape-players-influence-and-power [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Rao, N.R. (2016). Social Media Listening and Monitoring for Business Applications. [online] researchgate.net. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316665370_Social_Media_Metrics [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
Thakkar, J. (2019). Spends 2.5 hours per day watching online media The Indian Media & Entertainment landscape 2 Contents. [online] . Available at: https://www.wirc-icai.org/images/material/Media-Sector-Industry-Trends.pdf [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
The Hindu (2018). Is radio relevant in the 21st century? The Hindu. [online] 11 Jan. Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/is-radio-relevant-in-the-21st-century/article22423373.ece [Accessed 30 Mar. 2021].
