Profiles of major media types

Medium

Advantages

Limitations

Television

Good mass-marketing coverage; low cost per exposure; combines sight, sound, and motion; appealing to the senses

High absolute costs; high clutter; fleeting exposure; less audience selectivity

Newspapers

Flexibility: timeliness; good local market coverage; broad acceptability;        high believability

Short life; poor reproduction quality, small pass-along audience

The Internet

High audience selectivity; flexibility; no ad competition within the same medium; allows personalization.

Potentially low impact; the audience controls exposure

Direct mail

High audience selectivity; flexibility; no ad competition within the same medium; allows personalization

Relatively high cost per exposure; “junk mail” image

Magazines

High geographic and demographic selectivity; credibility and prestige high-quality reproduction; long life and good pass-along readership

Long ad purchase lead time; high cost; no guarantee of position

Radio

Good local acceptance; high geographic and demographic selectivity, low cost

Audio only; fleeting exposure; low attention (“the half-heard” medium); Fragmented audiences

Outdoor

Flexibility; high repeat exposure; low message competition; good positional selectivity

Little audience selectivity: creative limitations.