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Advertising is a non-personal communication of a product with an intent of influencing people. Most adverts are pre-recorded and played from time to time without necessarily having to host the sponsor anytime the media house wishes to air the advert. These messages are persuasive and could influence the choice of vendor someone buys from or service provider to reach out to.

Adverts have paid sponsors

Every advert has someone who is wishing to push it and that person is known. Most adverts end with directions to where listeners, viewers or readers can go to if they need any support regarding their products or services. So the sponsor, promoter or owner of every advert is identified.

Mediums of Advertising

Advertisers also choose their medium of advertising depending on their target group or audience. If someone wants to target buyers in his community and the community has only a radio station or information centre, he won’t advertise on a national Television even if he can afford since the target group isn’t the whole nation or country. The advertiser will rather struck a deal with the radio station or information centre since those are the media he could use to advertise directly to his target audience. The forms of advertising include orals, visuals, outdoor signs, movies, letter and magazines.

Traditional Media

Companies have used the traditional media for many years to reach consumers and influence them to make purchases. Until very recently, these advertising styles were very effective, and helped businesses to make profit. Traditional media include television advertisements, radio advertising, print advertising, direct mail advertisements, billboards and off-site signs, door-to-door sales and banner ads. However, as the needs and expectations of consumers change, advertising has also evolved. This is what has led to the rise of the new media and digital marketing methods. This has also led to the decrease in popularity of some traditional methods.

Social Media

Day in day out, new social media platforms and apps are released. As more people are joining social media platforms, more individuals are turning to social media sites to get connected to their audience and followers.
According to the Global Digital Report 2020, 4.54 billion out of the 7.75 billion people on earth uses the internet. Out of these, 3.80 billion people worldwide are social media users. 49% of the earths population uses social media. Currently, Facebook has 2.449 billion active users, followed by Google’s YouTube with 2.0 billion active users. Whatsapp follows with 1.6 billion and Facebook messenger with 1.3 billion. Twitter has 330 million users and Instagram has 1 billion active users. Snapchat has 382 million and Twitter 340 million.

The above figures indicate why many businesses are now advertising on social media platforms.

Need for Advertising

Advertising plays key role in today’s age of competition. Advertising has become a necessity for everybody in today’s day to day life whether you are a producer, traders, or the customer.

Advertising plays a key role in the life of the customer. Customers are the people who buy the products after they are made aware of the products availability in the market. If the product or service is not advertised, customers will not come to know what products or services are available and will not buy the product or patronise their services even if the product or service was for their benefit. One other thing is that advertising helps consumers find the best products for themselves. Exposing them to a range of products enables them to compare the products and make the best decisions for themselves. In effect, advertising is important for the customers.

Advertising also plays a very important role for the producers and the sellers of the products. Advertising helps increasing sales and helps producers to know their competitors and plan well to meet the competition.

Samsung and Apple uses advertising to introduce new products into the market. Most companies introduce or launch a new product in the market through advertising. On Friday, 5^th February, 2021, Chinese smartphone company, Xiaomi advertised their new borderless smartphone concept on Facebook and YouTube. Within minutes, the post had over 10,000 views and 1,000 shares on Facebook.

Advertising helps make consumers aware of the new product so that they can try the product.

Advertising helps in creating goodwill for a company and gains customer loyalty.

Demands for products keep on coming with the help of advertising and since demand and supply is a never ending process, the business will keep flourishing.

Advertising also help in educating people. Social issues such as child labour, alcoholic consumption, family planning education are also discouraged through advertising.