History of the past 100 years of advertising.

Whether your small business is based solely on the web, or if you have a brick and mortar store where you sell your goods and services it is extremely important to understand how technology has influenced successful marketing campaigns over the years. 

Ready for your history lesson?

Let’s start with radio. The first radio advertisements were simply announcements that benefited the owners of the stations. No money ever traded hands, however it didn’t take long until savvy business owners took advantage of this new medium. In 1922 Remik’s Music Store (based out of Seattle, WA) sponsored a program on KFC, a radio station that was partly owned by a Seattle based newspaper. Remik’s sponsored the radio show by promoting the program with large ads in the newspaper and invited people to buy songs that were just performed. Radio ads proved to be very effective compared to advertising in print alone, and even more so when owners combined both print and radio advertising. Soon, local DJs started to build reputations with their audience. Their listeners purchased the products or services that were mentioned by the on-air celebrity. Later, professionally produced spots included sound effects, background music, dialogue with numerous personalities, and jingles became an effective way of advertising to listeners. Studies showed that the quality of the commercials was just as important as the number of ads that they heard.

Television gives radio a run for it’s money. The first television advertisement was for a 20 second Bulova spot before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. It displayed an image of a clock superimposed on a map of the United States accompanied with a simple voice over that said “America runs on Bulova time.” (For anyone keeping score, the Phillies beat the Dodgers that day by a score of six to four). It wasn’t until 1990 until advertising on television became affordable to small businesses. Personal computers had advanced to the point where local broadcasters could use them for video production on local cable TV stations. Unlike radio, advertisers could represent their brand visually as well as with sound. Some ads, such as the Winston cigarettes commercials became so popular they ran for 20 years.

Television is still the dominant advertising medium today, Even though 50% of all TV homes will use a DVR by 2016, most viewers are still watching commercials. In fact, DVRs actually increased the rating for commercials by 44%. 

Internet now competes with radio, and television. Prodigy, a company owned by IBM and Sears, ran the first advertisement on the internet and promoted Sears products  in the early 1980s. Prodigy even ran advertisements for AOL, which one of Prodigy’s direct competitors. Global Network Navigator was the first commercial web publication offering clickable advertisements which we all know as banner ads. Internet advertising has grown to include many forms of advertising such as:

• Search engine result pages: Probably the most popular form as everyone is familiar with Google’s textually relevant ads

• Rich Media Ads: These are ads that have video and/or audio. They are typically using Adobe’s Flash technology, but ads written in HTML 5 are starting to appear as well.

• Social network advertising: If you use Twitter, then you’ve probably seen companies talking about sales, coupons, or just bringing their followers up to speed. The same is done on Facebook as well.

Internet advertising is getting more and more popular. Internet advertising revenues hit  record spending amounts in 2011. This is partly because affluent persons are actually using the internet more than television. Internet based advertising is only going to increase, especially when companies like Hulu are able to provide valuable free content.

What else is out there? There are literally thousands of different advertising ideas that you can use for your small business. You will need to base your decisions on your demographic, and what you are able to offer to your customer. Sometimes a special niche form of advertising might provide you with the results you are after. For example, a travel site might want to advertise on the mini-TVs in metropolitan taxis because that is the demographic they are trying to attract, or an smartphone case maker may want to advertise on a smartphone app because they can target customers that only have smartphones.

America has a love and hate relationship with advertising. It’s up to you to ensure that you stay loved.

For more information on how Tonangi Design & Media can create a website or produce a video for business visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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Stop wasting money, and advertise directly to your audience

Everyone remembers AOL CDs, and everyone had different uses for them. Only a small percentage of people actually signed up as customers. Some people used them for making shims for home carpentry projects. Of course this was a total waste of money. AOL didn't target their direct market. Most of these CDs ended up in the trash, but some of them ended up as works of art. In any case, AOL spent quite a bit of money. As a small business you can't afford to spend money marketing to customers that don't fit your demographic. When I receive a request for creating a commercial for a small business I always ask "What is your target demographic", and at least 50% of the time the answer is "well...everyone." This is actually never the case. A good advertising agency will help you define your correct demographic, and this is completely necessary when working with a less then ideal budget - which, right now is just about every small business in the United states.

Whether you are advertising on the internet or on television it is important to define your demographic. This will define how your advertisement will look. Your demographic will dictate the publications that Tonangi Media will choose to advertise your products and services on. It is never necessary to advertise to all people. Targeting your advertising will save you money, increase your conversion rate, and lower your customer acquisition cost. Defining your target demographic is one of the most important elements that a small business can work on even before you start your advertising campaign.

With television advertising, Tonangi Media has access to hundreds of networks, however we will choose only the networks that meet your specific target demographic requirements. The same will happen if you choose to advertise on the internet. For example if you are trying to sell a book targeted to business minded adults it would make no sense to advertise on children's stations like Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network, yet this is exactly what many advertising agencies do. Many agencies simply want to attract customers with the amount of spots that they can provide, but if these spots are not targeted directly to your potential customers then you are not 'getting a deal', but you are instead simply wasting your hard earned marketing and advertising dollars.

Don't make this mistake. Work with advertising agencies that can help you define your target demographic and will give you quotes based on reaching your potential customers. It's very easy to see hundreds of spots and get excited, but the details of when and where these spots play are extremely important.

For more information on how Tonangi Media can help you advertise on television or the internet please visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043

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Broadcast TV slips while Cable TV spending grows

Some advertisers believe that broadcast television is the only television format that they should utilize for advertising. They couldn't be more wrong. In fact the entire advertising industry disagrees with this myth. According to a recent Nielsen report, U.S. ad spending declined 15.4% during the first half of 2009 however Cable television advertising actually increased by 1.5%. This means that businesses have started to see the advantage that cable television advertising has over broadcast television. In addition to the extremely high budgets broadcast networks require the options are quite limited. The Big 4 Networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) are now trying to gain the advertising revenue that they lost to local and national cable television advertising.

This is important to small businesses, who thought that advertising on television would be cost prohibitive. Running a local or national cable television advertising campaign is no longer for just large companies. This also means that small businesses don't need to work only with their local cable company as many have done in the past. Advertising agencies, like Tonangi Media, have access to advertise on cable television networks in all 50 states.

From the Nielsen report: "What’s interesting is that we’re not just seeing a rise in spending for recession-friendly products like fast food restaurants. We’re seeing a lot more promotion of technological innovations like smartphones, computer software, and consumer-driven web sites. These advertisers see potential for their products despite our stressed economy and are leveraging advertising to drive their success.”

For more information on how Tonangi Media can help you advertise on television visit www.tonangi.com

 Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265| fax: 619.566.4043

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