Media buying 101: The media environment (Part 1)
Enough parties. Let’s go back to the Lesson Plan. We’ve already talked about the product, the client, and the target market. It’s time to go to the heart of the matter – let’s talk about the media itself. The media environment, or the media landscape, as some agencies prefer to call it, includes anything and everything that may be used as a MEDIUM to convey a message. Because this presents us with virtually infinite possibilities, organizing the myriad of media choices can take on different forms of classification.
But to keep things simple and manageable, let us adopt the more popular classifications. The most common practice is to divide all media into traditional media and non-traditional media. Traditional media could be re-stated as “tri-media” – because it covers the three most popular commercial mediums consumed by modern societies: television, radio, and print. Non-trad media would then include everything outside of tri-media: for instance, cinema, billboards, posters, neon signs, wall signs, etc. etc. etc. – the list could be endless. Sometimes cinema is classified under traditional media (but not under tri-media). The internet is normally classified under “new media” and is treated separately, not properly falling under either traditional or non-trad media.Under each of these classifications, we would have many more sub-classifications. For example, television now has variants like “free-to-air” or FTA, as opposed to satellite or cable, which consumers need to pay for separately just for access. Free-to-air itself has variations: VHF (very high frequency) – for channels 2 to 13; and UHF (ultra high frequency) for channels 17 and higher. When we get down to the nitty-gritty of media buying, these sub-classifications become much more complicated. When buying television, one would need to learn about individual programs and how these are further classified – by daypart, by program format, and so on. To illustrate: there are primetime shows, fringe early evening and late evening, noontime prime, early morning and late morning; once-a-week programs and multi-weekly programs like newscasts that run five days a week; there are sitcoms, telenovelas, gag shows, comedy, drama, variety and game shows; and so on and so forth.
It is the same with radio and print: there are daily and weekly newspapers, weekly, monthly and annual magazines; and there is an almost infinite variety of magazines; there is network radio, and there are independent local stations, and of course there is AM and there is FM. For the technically inclined, AM stands for amplitude modulation while FM stands for frequency modulation. If I had a blackboard (or a whiteboard) I could draw the radio wave and point out the difference between the two.
Non-trad media is now also known as Out-of-Home media (OOH) mainly to set them apart from the internet and other digital media (which are now normally referred to as new media). The most popular commercial OOH media would be cinema and billboards, including neon signs, and transit ads. Transit ads include bus-mounted billboards, wrap-around ads on MRT and LRT train cars, lighted boxes on top of taxicabs and tarpaulin signs on top of jeepneys, as well as the old printed covers that jeepneys use on the spare tires mounted beside the driver.
New media, or digital media, is not limited to Internet websites and ads placed pn them (think banner ads). There are other forms, such as emailers and electronic versions of newsletters and other publications. There are also CD-based content, such as ads inside audio and video CDs and DVDs. And of course there are gaming options – both online and CD-based (or any other storage device, handheld or otherwise). A recent phenomenon is the rapid growth in the popularity of online gaming among the youth – students, in particular, who engage in massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMRPG). Recent research data indicate a steady and accelerating trend especially among younger consumers to spend more time online than on any of the other traditional media options available to them. Not surprisingly, the more aggressive thinking television networks have embarked on IP (Internet Protocol) versions of their channels, as illustrated by National Geographic’s Video-on-Demand website facility.
Among online options, there is also a recent surge of interest in social networking sites like Friendster, Facebook, and Multiply. These new developments are part of what is now being called Web 2.0 – to emphasize their technological superiority over their predecessors (best exemplified by the e-group).
My own addition to non-trad media would be the classification of Special Events and the Malls as part of advertisers’ choices among Out-of-Home media. To illustrate my point: the typical shopping mall today attracts more than a hundred thousand visitors to their site. That size of an audience already exceeds your average FM station’s listenership. At those numbers, a mall should already be considered as a major advertising medium, generating audience sizes that run into the millions on any given month. Events also generate a lot of audience contacts. A concert, roadshow, mall tour or campus blitz typically generates thousands of eyeballs – eyeballs that usually belong to a fairly well defined target market. Compare the sizes of the audience between say, the crowd at an Ateneo-La Salle basketball game at the Big Dome versus your average glossy magazine.
If we simply consider the size of an audience that is generated by any activity or locality, then we can even include churches and synagogues as media, along with gyms, stadiums and parks.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions advanced in this article is the author’s own, and may not necessarily represent the views and opinions of THE LOBBYiST, its editors, or its publishers.
Factual Errors? Email us at editorial@thelobbyist.biz.
Copyright 2007 The LOBBYiST. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without the expressed permission of The LOBBYiST.
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