Effective advertising needs a strong story.
When the question is asked if advertising is effective, the answer is both "Yes" and "No." While there can be no doubt that advertising is effective (if it wasn't, businesses would not invest billions of dollars each year for advertising), it's also true that advertising is effective when it is done well.
Value
Part of what makes for effective advertising is providing value. If a company is going to advertise, the most effective area it can focus on is making sure that the advertising emphasizes the value the product or company has. While a part of advertising still deals with getting the message out to potential customers, some advertisers, such as Trevor Kaufman, CEO of interactive agency Schematics, believes that advertising must also serve a function.
Targeted Audience
Search engine advertising works effectively in much the same way that classified advertising works --- an individual with a need is searching for something specifically. When there is a target audience already in place, providing that audience with value would probably yield an effective end result. Instead of trying to build a need to sell an item, the need is already there.
Microsoft did a study in the United Kingdom to determine which form of advertising was the most effective. The results showed that print advertising brought in 5 pounds for every 1 pound spent, while television advertising brought in 2.15 pounds for every pound, and online advertising brought in 3.44 pounds for every pound. Of course, one study cannot be used to provide an accurate assessment of the entire advertising field. After all, a study performed by PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed that for every pound spent, television returned a profit of 4.5 pounds.
Ineffective Advertising
Just as there is effective advertising, there is also ineffective advertising. One example of ineffective advertising can be found with banner ads on the Internet. Even though there are a certain number of individuals who click through on the banners, advertisers have discovered that the kind of people who actually click on those ads are not in the spending demographics that they'd like.
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