SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
Types of Advertising
1.
Based on Medium of Advertising
i.
Print Media Advertising: Print advertising refers to advertising in a printed medium
such as a newspaper, magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from
media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or
magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade
journals on very specialized topics.
a. Newspaper: It is a form of advertising that can reaches out to the masses. It
is a relatively cheaper form of Advertising. Newspaper advertising can be
classified into:
i. Classified Advertising: It is a type of advertising that appears as
copy based messages under specific categories like Job,
Matrimonial, Real Estate, etc.
ii. Display Advertising: Display advertising in Newspaper contains the
standard components of print advertisement containing headline,
body text and visuals in the form of images or illustrations.
b. Magazine: Advertising on magazines provides a glossy medium mostly
national or global in nature for big brand advertisers. It provides an effective
medium to approach the specifically targeted group of prospective buyers or
a product or service.
c. Journals: These are an effective medium to reach out to technical people or
professionals belonging to a specific interest group to advertise a Niche
product.
ii.
Outdoor Media Advertising: It refers to any advertising done outdoors that
publicizes products and services. Types of outdoor advertising include billboards,
Banners, Posters, Glow signs, Cut-outs, etc.
a. Billboard: A billboard (also called a hoarding) is a large outdoor
advertising structure typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside
busy roads. Billboards present large and attractive advertisements to passing
pedestrians and drivers.
b. Banner: Banners are a form of advertisement where the advertisement is
printed on Flex or cloth and fixed using rope across a street or walls.
c. Poster: A poster is a medium of advertising designed using which we attach
an advertisement to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include
both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly
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SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and
informative. Posters are a frequent tool of advertisers.
d. Glow signs: The glowing and catchy Neon Sign Boards are very popular
now-a-days. We can see them almost at every corner of metro cities
advertising the shops and retail outlets. These are found placed on or near
the premises of the shops and retail outlets.
e. Cutouts: These are the life size cardboard cutouts advertising the products
that we find placed outside the gate of the shops.
iii.
Audio Visual Advertising: Television provides a popular medium of Advertising
through audio visual content. It is a comparatively costly medium of advertising and
requires a substantial amount of time to make the advertisement. It has the potential
to reach out to the masses. There are two basic formats of Television advertising –
Commercial and Info-commercial.
a. Commercial Advertising: These are the Advertisement films that are shown
in between popular television programmes and soaps and serials in a 10, 20,
30 or 40 second spots.
b. Infomercials: An infomercial is a form of television commercial, which
generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website, most often used
as a form of direct response television (DRTV). These long-form infomercials
are typically 15 to 30 minutes in length. Infomercials are also known as paid
programming or teleshopping. This phenomenon started in the United States,
where infomercials were typically shown outside peak prime time hours
for commercial broadcasters.
iv.
Radio Advertising: It is a traditional form of advertising that advertises through aural
content only. It is a relatively cheaper medium which is available to people at anytime
and anywhere.
a. Spots: When advertising in radio, advertising space is typically referred to as
an "advertising spot." These spots range in length, typically 30 seconds or 60
seconds. An advertising spot contains some aural content containing some
dialogue music of the defined duration.
b. Jingles: A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising in aural media. The
jingle contains one or more musical phrases and meaning that explicitly
promote the product or service being advertised, usually through the use of
one or more advertising slogans.
v.
Web Media Advertising: Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet
advertising or web advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the
Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.
a. Web-Banner: Banner advertising refers to the use of a rectangular graphic
display that stretches across the top, bottom or sides of a website. The
former type of banner advertisement is called a leader board, while the latter
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SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
is called a skyscraper and is positioned on a web page's sidebars. Banner
ads are image-based rather than text-based and are a popular form of online
advertising.
b. Text Box Advertising: These are the advertisements that appear with some
Text based advertising message with a link to a webpage.
c. Popup Advertising: Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on
the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display
area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the
foreground of the visual interface. The pop-up window containing an
advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript that uses cross-site
scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses Adobe Flash.
d. Interstitials: Interstitial ads are full-screen ads that cover the interface of a
website. They're typically displayed as a transition points between a
hyperlink and its linked webpage.
vi.
Mobile Advertising: Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless)
phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing. It is a widely
popular form of advertising which communicates personally with prospective buyers
through text messages.
2.
Based on Geographical Extent:
i. Local Advertising: Local advertising refers to all those advertisements that appear in the
local outdoor Medias like billboards. They normally advertise only those products or
services that are of local significance like a Musical programme, a local sari shop, local
mobile service provider advertising its schemes, etc.
ii. Regional Advertising: There are some products which are advertised on a particular
region only like Sunrise Mustard powder is advertised on Bengali regional language
channels which is followed by Bengalis only since it is primarily marketed in Bengal and
neighboring areas where the prospective buyers of the product are more concentrated.
iii. National Advertising: Some companies advertise its products or services throughout the
nation and have its prospective buyers spread over the entire nation. These
advertisements appear on mass Medias like national newspaper or television channel.
Examples of such products can be seen in Maruti Suzuki Alto LXI, Airtel, Amul butter, etc.
iv. Global Advertising: Global marketers like Coca-cola, IBM, Kodak, etc. uses global
advertising in which messages are same in all the advertising copies across globe.
3.
Based on Nature of Advertising
i. Hard sell Advertising: In advertising, a hard sell is an advertisement or campaign that uses a
more direct, forceful, and overt sales message. The term is also used to describe aggressive
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SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
sales techniques used by company representatives, particularly in the context of doorstep
selling.
This type of advertisement applies pressure through attractive and luring offers which
usually comes with a specific deadline.
ii. Soft sell Advertising: In advertising, a soft sell is an advertisement or campaign that uses a
more subtle, casual, or friendly sales message. This approach is the diametric counterpart
of a hard sell. It is less persuasive in nature and is less likely to irritate the prospective
buyers.
iii. Reminder Advertising: The sole aim of the Reminder advertising is to knock prospective
buyers about a deadline of an offer which has already been announced by a previous
hard-sell advertisement. It provides prospective buyers with a soft reminder about a
product. Successive reminders force prospective buyers to make a purchase decision. An
example of such an advertisement is an advertisement that reminds of last three days of
End of Season sale of Pantaloons.
iv. Prestige Advertising: It generally refers to the advertisements that are designed to
enhance the prestige of the company or its products. The status and reputation of the
company and its product is enhanced. Examples of such advertisement can be seen in the
form of SBI, The Telegraph, etc.
v. Indirect or Deceptive Advertising: It is also called Surrogate advertising. It is a form
of advertising which is used to promote banned products, like cigarettes and alcohol, in
the disguise of another product. This type of advertising uses a product of a fairly close
category, as: club soda, mineral water in case of alcohol, or products of a completely
different category (for example, music CD's or playing cards) to hammer the brand
name into the heads of consumers. The banned product (alcohol or cigarettes) may not be
projected directly to consumers but rather masked under another product under the
same brand name, so that whenever there is mention of that brand, people start
associating it with its main product (the alcohol or cigarette). In India there is a large
number of companies doing surrogate advertising, from Bacardi Blast music CD's,
Bagpiper Club Soda to Officers Choice playing cards.
vi. Humorous Advertising: The goal of Humorous advertisement is to convey advertising
message in a amusing or humorous way so that people get entertained by the
advertisement and keep the advertisement in mind. It is quite challenging task to make a
Humorous advertising in an effective way. Examples of such advertisement campaigns can
be seen in the form of Zoo Zoo campaign of Vodafone, Amul butter’s advertisement
Fevicol’s advertisement, etc.
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SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
vii. Educational Advertising: Educational advertising literally means any advertising that
educates the prospective buyers about a product and its uses and features. It is often
associated with the advertising of Educational Institutions and its courses. Examples of
educational advertising can be seen in the form of advertisements of Accu-chek, Delhi
Public School, BITM College, etc.
1.
Based on the type of Product or Industry
i. Consumer Goods Advertising: Consumer goods advertising, advertises all those goods
which a consumer buys for personal usage or for use of his/ her near and dear ones.
FMCG (Fast moving consumer products, wrist watches, Shoes, edible items, clothes,
cosmetics, etc belong to this category of goods. Consumer goods advertising often uses
hard-sell advertising.
ii. Industrial Goods Advertising: Industrial advertising, otherwise known as business to
business advertising, is a form of advertising to other businesses. It can include the
advertising of parts or raw materials for their products or equipment used in their
manufacturing process.
iii. Service Goods Advertising: It refers to the advertisements that promote service goods like
a Courier service, Internet Service, Mobile service, etc. It uses both Hard-sell and Soft-sell
style of advertisement.
iv. Financial Advertising: Financial advertising advertises financial products like savings
schemes of banks, mutual fund schemes, loan proposals, insurance schemes, etc.
introduced by banks and other financial institutions and other corporate setups that raise
funds from the primary market. Financial advertising has undergone a massive change in
the style of advertising over the years. From a text based style of advertising practiced
earlier to visually appealing image based style of advertising. It is a challenging arena of
advertising. Over the last few years the market of financial advertising has grown with the
growth of the financial sector in India.
v. Retail Advertising: From 1980 onwards retail advertising spread in India at a very fast rate
with the rise in Retail outlets. It refers to the advertising of shops and retail outlets like
Spencer’s, Big Bazar, Pantaloons, Shriniketan, etc. Retail advertising do not focus on a
particular product, they aim at drawing the people to the retail outlet itself.
vi. Government Advertising: Government advertisement aims at advertising the various
advertising copies published by Government bodies and various ministries of state or
union government. It is characterized by the use of our national emblem on it.
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SRC’s notes on Types of Advertising
vii. Professional Advertising: It advertises the services provided by professionals like Doctors,
Hair Stylists, Lawyers, etc. They are mostly local in nature and hence are advertised
through outdoor media or local newspapers.
viii. Institutional Advertising: Institutional advertising is any type of advertising intended to
promote a company, corporation, business, institution, organization or other similar
entity. Such advertising does not attempt to sell anything directly. It informs the public
about what the institution is doing for the society and the country in areas like literacy,
health, employment generation etc.
ix. Entertainment Advertising: Entertainment advertising is a tool through which advertisers
and marketers advertise Films, Television programmes, Musical programmes, rock
concerts, etc. It caters the advertising requirements of the entertainment industry.
x. Tour and travel Advertising: Travel advertisement aims at advertising tour packages,
Hotels and resorts and tourist spots. Its target group is the tourists. It caters the
advertising requirements of the tour and travel industry. Web medium is a popular
medium for such advertising.
xi. Infrastructure / Real Estate Advertising: Real estate industry is an industry that has grown
in proportion over the last decade and this has created a new sector of advertising. Real
estate or infrastructural advertising promotes the selling of real estate projects or
infrastructures to prospective buyers. These advertisements use hard-sell advertising style
to sell the flats and properties.
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