Overview Of Various Advertizing Mediums

Attention refers to a voluntary or involuntary observation of something around you. From the earliest of days, there have been many mediums through which people have ‘sold’ attention, these include posters, billboards, newspapers, radio, television commercials, television shows, video games, and internet. Using these mediums, one could manipulate the viewers into thinking that this product is beneficial or necessary for them to have, usually there are target markets through which attention is captured. After which people are influenced into buying the product, in other words, their attention is sold without them knowing how their interest is developed for a product merely through advertisement.

To this date, many of these mediums still have a lasting impact on the audience, especially the internet. The process of capturing our attention dates back to the mid 1800s. During those days the medium through which the industries would capture viewer’s attention were posters, and newspapers. Since it was the first time in the 1800s that the posters had actually started to come into notice, people would voluntarily give away their attention to the colorful, tall, and beautiful posters all across the cities, this became an advantage due to which it was easier for the industry to capture people’s attention and persuade them into buying a product, or becoming part of the army. Whereas the weakness of this medium was that when it got such popularity and a good response, beautiful cities like Paris were filled with posters at every corner, and this started to give a bad image of the city, and made it look dirtier, which is why there was backlash against it and critics started portraying posters as unhygienic, and wanted to remove them to make their city beautiful again.

Another medium was the newspaper, its strength was that if one found an interesting and different story, then his paper was bound to have the readers that would benefit him, an example of this would be The New York Sun, whose publisher found stories apart from politics and included advertisements in its first issue, just to gain advertisers, he further found more stories from the courtroom and published it in his newspapers, and within months he started capturing the attention that was needed, but this did not last for long as the competitors figures what was going on, and this actually became one of the weaknesses of a newspaper. Since publishers started seeing what was happening, they started picking up different and interesting stories to capture more readers’ attention, due to which competition grew a lot, in terms of content and price, therefore tough competition became a weakness for the newspapers at became quite hard to manage costs and build reach. The attention-capture industry of today using different mediums and techniques, its most beneficial medium is the internet. The internet has been advantageous because it helps in reaching a huge amount of audience with less expenses as one ad can be viewed by a lot of people, that too many times, and does not cost the advertiser again and again, it is basically a one-time cost to put the advertisement up on the internet and the rest is done automatically while the user keeps seeing it on social media or other websites.

The disadvantage, however, is that there are too many options for people to choose, they might ignore your ads and focus more on your competitors ad, and could become a reason for you to lose customers. Another medium is celebrity commercials, the strength of this medium is that it would be easier to capture attention and persuade customers to buy a product, if you have a recent, extremely famous actor or sports person in your advertisement because people would want to do or use something that their ideal does as well. The disadvantage would be that if your competitor already has featured a celebrity who is being praised quite a lot nowadays, then it might also divert your customers toward your competitors’ product, and make you lose your revenue too. Radio and television broadcasting is quite different in today’s era, as compared to what it was in the earliest days. At first, radio advertisements did not exist at all, as it was believed that radio is for the family to enjoy their time together,and not a place to advertise. Radio shows were mostly a few minutes of installments, where actors would be portraying a story. It wasn’t until the 1920s that advertisements started on radio. Whereas, nowadays, radio channels are all about talk shows, music, and advertisements.

One can hear all sorts of advertisements on the radio, from concert information to consumer goods. Earlier ways of marketing a product mostly included dialogues related to the product, whereas today we have a blend of dialogues and jingles for marketing a product. Not only radio, but the television broadcasting has changed as well, earlier the focus used to be entirely on the product, showing different faces in advertisements, using or consuming the product to make it look appealing in order to capture the viewer’s attention. Whereas nowadays, the centerpiece is not the product, but the people or the jingles used, the marketing strategy is either to make a jingle so catchy that it keeps diverting a person’s attention towards it from time to time, or to include famous celebrities that people look up to who portray how they use a certain product and it has done wonders for them, in both situations it derives attention automatically.

In the late 1990s, a new, revised way of capturing attention was introduced. The documentary game show was the paradigm shift that happened during that time. It was basically a mixture of a documentary and a game show, which involved physical competition that was under constant surveillance. The show made contestants stay on an island, and based on their performances, it used to eliminate the contestants one by one, to have a winner at the end. This show was quite a hit, and increased viewership as well. Other shows also started airing that used to have ordinary people as the leads in the show, be it games, quiz shows, dance etc, ordinary people started getting the attention that was only thought to be captured by actors, the President or any famous person. This pattern of capturing attention, thus changed in the 1990s, it was no longer thought that only celebrities could be fortunate enough to be on the television, or that only they were the ones that could be recognized by millions. These show formats entirely changed the way the attention-capturing industry worked.

Ordinary people now had a chance to become famous just by participating in game shows or showcasing their talents, and this completely revolutionized how marketing and advertising worked. Later by the end of 1990s, the internet had also transformed into a much more important and appealing thing for the people, this also contributed to further capturing the attention by another new and improved medium. All in all, advertisement has existed since the earliest days in one form or the other. It is basically the primary way by which our attention is captured, and through which business models around the world work. It is a strategy of businesses to persuade people into buying their products, this strategy can either attract voluntary or involuntary attention from us, and makes us interested into the advertisement shown using different mediums, thus causing us to sell our attention, and buy the product.