Marketing Terminology Explained Part 2 - Advertising
Following the success of our last blog on demystifying marketing terminology, we’ve decided to make it into a series. This, part 2, covers Advertising and seeks to help remove some of the confusion that we marketer’s and media buyers create when we create a campaign for a client.
Advertising
So, first and foremost, and before we start to break down terms and channels (see definitions below!), what actually is advertising?
Advertising came into being because of a need to generate trade and sales for businesses or services, but once it was established it was found to have a huge value to other areas of businesses and institutions – recruitment, fundraising, sustaining brand recognition and dissemination of information. The Advertising Association defines Advertising as:
“A means of communication with the users of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them”
The concept of advertising being paid is important, as this covers types of ‘advertising’ you might not normally class in that category, such as working with influencers, or sponsoring something. However, by this definition advertising would cover any type of activity where payment has exchanged hands – hence why influencers now have to have #AD on all of their paid-for activity. Something which has been cracked down on over recent years.
ATL (Above The Line) and BTL (Below The Line)
Above the line and below the lines, are two terms often banded around the marketing arena, and are to some degree a quite outdated way of categorising marketing activity as marketers become more creative on how they use specific channels. That being said the simple definition is that ATL marketing focuses on generating awareness, attention and building your brand (and typically uses very traditional media such as TV, Radio, Print, and out of home), whereas BTL is about marketing to a smaller audience and aiming to convert them to an action; things like PR, SEO, Paid search, Social media, content marketing and events.
Above The Line
ATL media is a great opportunity to showcase your brand, and create a campaign that looks impressive.
ATL activity is typically more expensive, and will often require you to work with a specialist media intermediary (to get great rates and help you navigate unexpected and complex costs – but be warned, they take a cut of the spend!) It's favoured by larger brands, as sadly the cost makes it inaccessible for small and medium-sized businesses. Remember, that you need between 6 and 8 interactions for someone to consider your brand, so doing this solely through ATL activity is a costly way to do this.
So, what do we know about the effectiveness of ATL activity? Well, one of its challenges is that its harder to measure, as you tend to be measuring things like long term brand recall, reach and frequency.
Below The Line
BTL media focuses on creating preference and long term brand loyalty and relationships.
BTL is a lot cheaper and easier to manage. Because unlike an ATL campaign where you have to book your outdoor posters, or TV spots months ahead, a BTL campaign can be changed and optimised.
Typically, it is much easier to measure BTL effectiveness, as you are measuring the end of the conversion funnel (see infographic below). You can measure its effectiveness on things like website visits, click-throughs, cost per clicks etc.
Koozai, have cleverly summarised the difference between ATL and BTL in the infographic below.
However, as great as this graphic is at explaining the difference, don’t be fooled into only doing BTL activity (Koozai is a digital marketing agency, of course, BTL will come out on top!) To achieve great advertising success, you need both ATL and BTL activity. ATL to build your brand, and feed the funnel of awareness for your product or service and BTL to close the deal. Don’t be fooled by the savings you can make by only spending on BTL, you’ve got to keep feeding the top of the funnel.
Media
The term ‘media’ could be interchanged with activity, or channels, or specifically naming different types of advertising. Essentially media refers to advertising vehicles, the medium by which you pay to promote your business for example - billboards, magazines, social media, TV etc.
Terms you’re likely to hear when booking ‘media’
Out Of Home
Out Of Home (or OOH) as its often referred to on a media lay down, refers to visual advertising which is found outside of your home (billboards, signage, and digital signage). Until the outbreak of COVID-19, OOH advertising has remained popular across the UK – mainly because of they are great at creating large scale awareness and are great to complement other activities (for example, you see an advert online before you go to work, you then get on the bus, and the bus shelter has an OOH of that same advert, inside the bus, there are panels promoting the same brand, and when you disembark the bus there’s another bus station advert as you get off – you’re well on your way to those 6-8 interactions).
OOH campaigns do allow for creativity, it no longer has to be a simple boring flat ad, below are some great examples of brands who used OOH to do something different.
That being said, OOH is expensive, and does have some limited messaging capabilities, people are speeding past on bikes, cars etc, so messaging has to be clear, with minimal copy. Additionally, there is now such a swell of OOH, consumers can have a ‘blindness’ to it, and it doesn’t cut through – this is where creativity becomes so important!
Spots
Spot advertising is essentially a way of buying TV air time.
A spot might be anything from 10 seconds upwards. A 30-second spot is an advert which lasts for 30 seconds, booked to a certain TV advert break (there are different ways to buy TV but Spots is the most traditional way). Traditionally most adverts are 30 or 60 seconds but you can also have EPIC or long-form spots – where 60 seconds is just not enough to tell a story – think John Lewis Christmas ad.
The cost of a spot depends on the programme, time of day, and where in the programme the advert is (pre-programme, during or start). TV is traditionally a very expensive medium, and spot advertising can be the most expensive way to buy it, however, it depends on how you select your spot. For some fun here are some of the most expensive air time spots you can purchase:
A 30 second during the US Super Bowl during 2019 was at least $5.1 million
A 30 second during Love Island costs around £45,000
A 30 second during Coronation Street is around £41,000
TVRS
I’ll be honest, I have always found TVR’s a very confusing term. It’s like the TV people are purposely trying to make it confusing to understand what you are going to get!
A TVR is a way of measuring the popularity of a program (or break of that programme) by comparing its audience to a population as a whole - It stands for Television Rating. Depending on the percentage of a TVR, your cost of an advert space will vary. Marketing IQ explains it like this:
1 TVR is 1% of a target audience universe as defined by both demographic and geography. So, if there are 50m adults in the UK then 1 Adult National TVR is 1% of 50m – 500,000. If a national programme is watched by 2m adults it delivers 4 TVRs.
Clear as mud right? Essentially it’s the % of a specific market that watch that show. TVRS will affect the cost of the advert time you are buying, but also potentially the price you will pay for the actors who are in that advert (many negotiate this part of their fee).
OTS and OTH
More acronyms! We do love an acronym in marketing.
OTS stands for Opportunity To See, and means that marketers buy the potential reach that an advertising channel can buy – how often will my audience physically see something. You’ll often see OTS defined as 2.3 or 2.5, and this is because its worked with the below equation:
The gross reach (the number of persons reached regardless of the number of times the ad has been shown) divided by the number of people the advert is reached once (the net reach).
So how many do you need? Well, the research isn’t quite clear, but as high a number as possible (within reason). The more frequently people see an advert the more it will cut through and create long term awareness.
OTH – you guessed it Opportunities To Hear, essentially, it’s the same as OTS, but for radio!
Reach
We’ve used it above in this article, and you’ll see it all over every type of media you buy.
Reach refers to the total number of people who have seen/ heard your advert – it does not relate to how many times they may have seen it (that’s OTS).
Impressions
Differently to reach, impressions are the number of times your content has been displayed. It is typically only relevant for digital media.
Hootsuite gives the below example:
Reach – If 100 total people have seen your ad, that means your ad’s reach is 100.
Impression - refers to the number of times your ad or content has been displayed on a screen. Let’s say that your ad from the previous example popped up on those people’s screens a total of 300 times. That means the number of impressions for that ad is 300.
These are just some of the crazy terms you will see when buying media, but hopefully now you're equipped to view media plans with more confidence. If you need help navigating your media planning, or creating your advertising and marketing plan – get in touch at hello@marketingwithpassion.co.uk