The Future for Advertising Products

Advertising has existed for decades but came into prominence only with the emergence of advertising and promotion agencies. An advertising agency came to be regarded as a fully fledged institution that focused on creating brand identity for businesses and used creative and sometimes, innovative inputs for advertising products.

The era of advertising products actually started around World War II and the product in question was the political agenda of governments, and the battle itself. The 1950’s or the post war period saw increasing reach of mass advertising forms like radio and newspapers. This was a start of a new era as the decision for buying products for more and more people relied on effective advertising.

Advertising is a self evolving industry and over the last two decades different forms of advertising products have been used to reach out to the target audience.

Advertising Industry Expenditures

Advertising expenditures have been an integral part of every corporate budget plan. Over the last 75 years, the advertising expenditures have risen sharply. Here is an insight into the average spending for advertising products in the US between 1919 and 2008

Year	Advertising Expenditure(millions)	% of GDP
1919	1,930	2.5%
1920	2,480	2.8%
1930	2,450	2.7%
1935	1,720	2.3%
1940	2,110	2.1%
1945	2,840	1.3%
1950	5,700	1.9%
1960	11,960	2.3%
1970	19,550	1.9%
1980	53,570	1.9%
1990	129,968	2.2%
2000	247,472	2.5%
2005	271,074	2.2%
2008	274,858	-

Source: http://www.galbithink.org/ad-spending.htm

This shows how the expenditure has actually increased for advertising products in the last 89 years in the US. In the first three quarters of 2008, the top 10 product advertisers showed an expenditure of $12,834.6 million, which is a 0.2% decrease from 2007 over all forms of advertising platforms.

From different researches and studies, it has been seen that the Internet Media is fast becoming a preferred medium for advertising products. In fact, according to a report by TNS media intelligence, there has been an increase of 8.5% in the advertising expenses on the Internet media in 2008 as compared to 2007.

Experts believe that the next five years are going to be extremely crucial for the advertising industry. This is because of the fact that customers are becoming more and more knowledgeable and hence will not fall for the emotionally appealing advertisements. On the other hand, new and evolving technologies are on the verge of redefining how advertising as a whole can be created, sold, tracked, and consumed. Add to this, the rapid growth of online advertising and you can very well imagine how advertising products will progress from here onwards.

Tools for Advertising Products

There are several forms of advertising that can be applied for advertising products but some of the most popular and effective forms include:

• Mobile Billboard advertising: First there were the billboards and now there are the mobile billboards. Basically these are billboards that can be moved from one place to another to maximize reach and create higher visibility for advertising products. The mobile billboards of today are lighted and hence visible even in the night and are most commonly used for advertising products that can vary from a laptop to SUV vehicles. It is being used more than ever before by different industries for target advertising, long-term campaigns, promotional events, store openings, and sporting events.

• Internet Advertising: This refers to the advertising of products or services over the World Wide Web. This type of advertising takes advantage of banner advertisements on websites, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, web 2.0 strategies, e-mailers, and newsletters for creating a customer engagement cycle. Internet advertising is becoming popular because the expense is much lower as compared to traditional advertising and the impact is much wider and higher. Due to the increase in the accessibility and reach of the internet across the world, more and more people now prefer shopping online. In other words, consumers are moving away from the physical marketplace to the virtual marketplace and it’s time for advertisers to move there to.

• Television commercials: Television commercials are still one of the favorite options for advertising products. Although, television commercials are expensive right from creating them to airing them, they are still considered as one of the most effective mass-market advertising platform. As a matter of fact, during a super bowl football game in the US, a 30-second spot on national television reached $3 million.

Final Word

Advertising products have come a long way since flyers and posters. With the digital and internet revolution, advertising will evolve as well and if you want to stay ahead of the competition then it is important to innovate and change your advertising strategy from time to time.