Introduction
Advertising has always been an important marketing tool, perhaps as old as commerce itself. They say that the man who figured out to put a sign on his shop was the father of marketing and advertising. The world has changed much since, and there are numerous ways of advertising one’s product – through billboards, radio, newspapers, television, and the Internet. The latter is slowly but surely pushing the other ways of advertising out, as Digital Media becomes more important than any other form of media that exists out there. The newest word in the advertising and brand-promoting strategy is Online Display Advertising. This assessment paper will be analyzing the use of display advertising for the promotion of a large brand such as Sony PlayStation.
Online Display Advertising as a Branding Tool
In the 21st century, traditional advertising is proving itself less and less effective. There are many reasons for that – the billboards are hardly aesthetical, the TV advertisements force people to leave until their shows are back on, and the paperback advertising pamphlets are considered to be little more than litter. All three are annoying, and generating annoyance is hardly the scope of any advertising campaign. Online banners were the digital analogy to these, and equally disrupting. As it stands, customers hate pop-up banners, which contributes to the popularity of the Ad-blocker extensions. However, display advertisements lack that notion.
As long as they are associated with the corresponding content, be that either text, audio, or video files, they are not perceived as invasive when compared to the other forms of advertising. Unlike static banners, they also contain far more information that has the potential to hook and inform potential clients of the services a company provides. It also serves as a much better visualization of the color schemes and symbols associated with the company, an outlet to promote its ideas and traditions. All this makes it an excellent tool for brand-promotion, as it is more efficient than any other advertising outlets (“The Benefits of Display Advertising” par. 2).
Display Advertising and Social Networks
The effectiveness of internet advertising depends on a lot of information and social profiling. Many social network companies, such as Instagram or Facebook, offer advertising services to large companies, such as Sony, Samsung, and others. Extensive advertising on such popular sites can be expensive, as these resources use the vast amount of customers’ personal information to arrange advertisements accordingly.
Facebook is one of the heavy-hitters when it comes to displaying advertising. It competes with Google for the same ad dollar. Until now, Google kept the tabs on the users outside of the Facebook database, while Facebook had extensive info on the users within its orbit. Now, the company is expanding into Google territory, has announced its intentions to target the audience outside of its user base (Rusli 1).
Instagram, on the other hand, does not feel like investing in the non-user base. With an audience of over 500 million users, it provides a platform-oriented for all businesses, big or small. With the ability to identify the user’s location, it provides them with ads of business in the area, which is a very useful feature for the smaller companies who wish to attract attention to themselves. Instagram works with three kinds of ads, those being the photo ads (classic banner), the video ads, and the carousel ads, which are considered an improvement over photo ads (“Advertising on Instagram” par. 1).
Display Advertising and Sony Playstation
The reason why big brands invest so much into display advertising is that it is capable of reaching most of the audience, combining all the good parts of previous advertising models while having weaknesses of none. Brand promotion involves several stages – first making your brand name known, and then informing the customer about products and services (Powell 1). PlayStation has no need for making its name known – everybody in the world knows the brand and what it promotes.
What it focuses on now is advertising its content. There are many products available for PlayStation – from new games to VR simulators. Display advertising could be used to inform the potential customers and buyers about the new products coming out, using short, snappy videos and carousel adverts.
Current Ads for Playstation
Using Moat.com, it is possible to locate all of the ads used by Sony PlayStation at this moment. It is obvious that the analysts at Sony realize the importance of using advanced advertising techniques such as display adverts. There is little to no static banners in their employ, all adverts either incorporating a video or a set of images to inform a customer that would hover over it. The ads have a clean, professional design, and give just enough information to bait the customer’s interest (“Sony Computer Entertainment” par. 1).
The presence of a logo in every single banner reinforces the image of the company in peoples’ minds and ensures the brand’s longevity. The company extends its reach to all social networks and other advertising resources, in order to ensure that everyone would know about their latest products, even those not particularly interested in gaming.
Works Cited
Advertising on Instagram, 2016. Web.
Powell, Annetta. 5 Effective Brand-Building Strategies to Attract Customers. Web.
Rusli, Evelyn. Buy Signal: Facebook Widens Data Targeting. Web.
Sony Computer Entertainment, 2016. Web.
The Benefits of Display Advertising: Why Big Brands do it, and You should too?2016. Web.