We’ve already discussed what media advertising is and what types it includes. In this article, we’ll focus on how media advertising works and how marketers can generally understand whether advertising has an effect.

The Goals of Media Awareness Advertising

The primary goal of media advertising is to create demand. Each individual campaign works on different aspects, but they all ultimately converge on one goal.

For example, there are brand media campaigns aimed at drawing attention to the brand and making people remember it. However, a brand isn’t built just for the sake of it; it’s constructed so that consumers recognize it and choose it over other products.

There are also product-oriented media campaigns that highlight the advantages of a specific product. Everyone knows the Apple brand, but without broad advertising campaigns, someone might not notice the release of a new iPhone and not purchase it.

Sometimes manufacturers or distributors need to introduce consumers to a completely new product, and in that case, media advertising is used to explain what to do with it and why it’s needed. For instance, in the early 2000s on Ukrainian TV, there was an ad “Beer loves cans.” Without mentioning any brand, it explains the idea that aluminum cans are good.

Here, we also see an increase in demand for a product in a specific packaging, an attempt to explain to consumers that this can also be bought. Thus, a media advertising campaign can work on different levels, but its main idea is to create demand.

The Mechanism of Media Advertising

Before the widespread use of the internet, media advertising worked quite simply. Advertisers searched for relevant media consumed by their target audience and bought placements there. If the placements were regular, consumers remembered that there was a certain brand with certain products. A certain brand of cream, tea with scents, and a reliable boiler became part of the audience’s worldview – even if readers/viewers didn’t buy anything from it, they knew who to turn to and, if necessary, chose a familiar brand rather than a no-name.

The spread of the internet has complicated advertising, bringing about new opportunities and mechanics. Online advertisers can direct their audience straight to their website, where purchasing is just a couple of clicks away. As marketers, we now expect consumers to place orders immediately after viewing an ad (hence we measure performance in click-through rates and conversion costs). However, the need to remind consumers about the brand, inform them about new products, and generally stay in sight hasn’t disappeared.

Media advertising is necessary for companies that want to introduce a new, innovative product: to explain its advantages over analogs, teach how to use the novelty, and convince of its necessity. Touchscreen gadgets existed long before the iPhone, but it was Apple with its vivid presentations and campaigns that convinced consumers that smartphones should be in everyone’s pocket.

When it comes to products familiar to the market, such as clothing, media advertising shows what sets a specific brand apart from dozens of other manufacturers. People already know how to wear sweaters, so the next step is to show models in which the buyer will recognize themselves and understand that this sweater from this brand is meant for them.

Media advertising works on all this, and if your target audience is digital, then campaigns for it should be launched online.

Segmentation in Media Awareness Advertising

The key conceptual difference in digital media advertising lies in targeting. On YouTube, you don’t need to launch a universal creative from TV to everyone; here, you can tailor the video to the target audience and show messages made specifically for them to each segment of potential buyers.

For example, Ajax, entering the Italian market, defined the circle of potential buyers as:

• Business owners
• Travel enthusiasts
• Football fans.

The company prepared a series of creatives for each of these audiences. Football fans saw a former AC Milan player jokingly describing AJAX as a game tactic on the field, while other segments received their messages, and the campaign was effective with the rest as well.

It’s worth noting that this is not a list of segments but a rough portrait of the audience. For more details on this campaign, read the case study “Case Study. How Display Ads Introduced AJAX to Italians”.

How to Understand if Awareness Advertising Works

The most challenging question regarding media advertising is its effectiveness. Some become disillusioned with media ads altogether because they don’t know how to measure their impact. Yet, there are viral slogans that stay in people’s minds for decades. We’ll delve into specific measurement methods in a separate video, but here we’ll mention that as long as the goal of media advertising is demand generation, it should be evaluated based on the demand it can generate.

• Comparing brand queries before, during, and after the advertising flight,
• Assessing website traffic or specific page views month to month or year to year,
• Surveying the target audience (offline or using digital tools like Brand Lift).

At newage. agency, we’ve developed our own methodology for assessing ad effectiveness, and we set up tracking for deferred conversions at the campaign launch stage. We mark viewers of the ad videos and later observe the audience’s actions on the client’s website. This allows us to evaluate:

• How many viewers visited the site after seeing the ad,
• How many purchases or other conversions were made by viewers,
• Which creative (video or banner) brought more people to the client,
• Which audience segments responded better to the ad and visited the site,
• Which regions showed the most interest in the ad, and so on.

We’ve elaborated on this further in an article about Comprehensive Analysis.