Advertising Spots

     There is definitely something ironic about advertising for advertising spots. Throughout critical thinking, I have taken note of the tactics people use to pull in these advertisers. The advertising world has to collaborate in order to succeed and therefore the people who are selling the ad space don't have to play the same mind tricks. There are two sides to the equation. The people who have the ads and those who sell the ad space. Something they both have in common is their desire to make money.

I have noticed that when people advertise for advertising space, they don’t use the normal, complex tactics. For example, on bus benches, there are usually messages as simple as this:

This is less manipulative than the people that buy the spots such as:

This is probably because the bench owners recognize that the people they are selling the benches to understand the manipulation that consumers experience. This really goes to show how much the sellers customize their product and ads to the customers. You may argue that the bench company is using the technique “the bare necessities” but I think they literally just alerting the people looking for places to put their ads. The people buying the ad space are seeking the bench sellers opposed to normal consumers who just flick through a magazine and come across ads.

In order to make ads successful, it is completely necessary to find good ad space. It gives the ads purpose and reaches the audience. It is just as important as the ad itself.

Before studying marketing tactics, I didn't realize how much goes on behind the scenes. It always sparked curiosity in me to wonder how much time people take to develop the ads. I now realize that a lot of thought goes into it. They take into account the gender, race, placement, and number of people throughout the ad in order to manipulate the audience to believe the quality of their lives will be improved by falling for the product or service. By noticing empty street bench ads, I noticed a whole other side to campaigning. In order for people to see the ads, there must be somewhere to put them.

In order to reach a wide array of audiences, advertisers must evaluate where these people go to seek the media. For example, I would figure a diaper ad would not be in a men's health magazine because it is a common reality assumption that women are likely to buy the diapers. Therefore, diaper ads are more likely to be in a parenting magazine where the audience actually seeks out diapers.