Talk:Advertising media selection

message: All these articles should be combined in one article about advertising media. Oicumayberight 17:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article contains a number of types of promotion, which it incorrectly terms advertising, but which are more properly terms promotion. Marketers make an important distinction between promotion and advertising.  Promotion is a general category which includes advertising, but all forms of promotion cannot be termed advertising.
By definition, advertising is a "paid form of communication, in a non-personal media, designed to persuade."  Some definitions of advertising also specify that the communication be in a mass media. See Advertising management for a detailed discussion of advertising, how it is defined, and the central characteristics of advertising.
The important issue is that the advertiser must pay a third party media outlet to carry the advertising message. Because the advertiser pays for the space or time, the advertiser has control over the timing of the message, the content of the message and also has control over the intended audience. In effect when an advertiser buys a spot on TV or radio, they are buying access to a defined audience. Similarly, when an advertiser buys space in a newspaper or magazine, they are buying access to that media's readership. 
By this definition, the following forms of promotion CANNOT be classified as advertising
* Sponsorship (which the article incorrectly calls sponsorship advertising but should be called simply sponsorship. In more than 40 years as a marketer, I have never seen the term sponsorship advertising in any text-book or article. Sponsorship is defined as "the act of providing money for a television or radio program, website, sports event, or other activity usually in exchange for advertising or other form of promotion."  When companies engage in sponsorship, such as a logo on an athlete's uniform, they do not have total control over the way that the message is disseminated. This drawback was most clearly apparent at the recent Olympics where the Olympic Committee banned all athletes from displaying any logo or in any way promoting brands that were not official Olympic sponsors. This ban extended to the sponsored athlete's Facebook pages, Twitter feeds etc.  Due to this lack of control, sponsorship is not in the same category as paid advertising.
* Product Placement refers to the "practice of supplying a product or service for display in feature films or television programs". As with sponsorship, the marketer lacks complete control over the amount of air-time given to the product. Many products are supplied to film sets - some will be featured in the final product, some will be ignored and even those that are featured may only be given a fleeting moment of air-time. In contrast, when an advertiser buys a 30 second spot on TV, the advertiser has total control over how to display the brand within that 30 secs.
* Direct mail (which the article incorrectly calls direct mail advertising).  By definition, direct mail refers to the practice of contacting and influencing carefully chosen prospects with direct mail - which may be in the form of addressed mail or letter box drops with catalogues or flyers. This type of promotion does not meet the definition of advertising in a number of respects. First, advertising refers to messages distributed by a non-personal or mass media. Direct mail, especially addressed mail is a personal media. Secondly, advertising messages are mediated by the third party media outlet. Direct mail is NOT mediated - it is a direct communication between a marketer and a prospect. Therefore, direct mail CANNOT be regarded as advertising. Instead it is a different type of promotion. 
Please define your terms!
When editors start new pages in the marketing area, it would be very helpful, and very wise to advance an accepted definition of the article's main topic in                                                                                                            the opening paragraphs. All too often, I have seen marketing articles that either fail to advance a realistic definition, or that advance a poor quality definition (possibly unsourced and occasionally fabricated) which then sets the tone for the rest of the article. If the core topic is not properly conceptualised, the article's contents will eventually stray further and further away from the main theme. If the definition is too broad, the article tends to become a dumping ground for all manner of content that is only vaguely related to the central theme. There are already too many articles in the marketing area that lack focus, often due to definitional/ conceptual problems that become embedded for want of better definitions which set boundaries for what is to be discussed and what is not to be discussed.  
When editors add to existing pages, please take note of any definitions - and ensure that content which is to be added fits with the existing definition. If your new content is not a good 'fit' and you believe that the existing definition is incorrect, then you should revise it with reference to reliable sources, before adding new content. When your content is not a good fit, it may well be that it is off-topic and actually belongs on a different page. Have a look around and see if you can find a better place for your content. Start by looking at the 'See Also' links at the bottom of the article - these usually provide links to closely related topics - which might provide a few clues as to where your content might belong.
It's not good enough to simply add ill-fitting content and hope that no-one will notice or that some-one else will fix it up on your behalf.  
BronHiggs (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately IP editors are unlikely to read talk page comments, or in many cases to perform good large edits.  Sponsorship, direct mail and promotion wasn't in the page from its original version in 2006 onward. An anonymous IP added the three in March 2015, and made the page worse. Here is the page before with multiple inline refs, and here is the page after their edits. The page was then vandalised in vandalised in March but the removed material wasn't restored when the vandalised additions were subsequently removed due to manual deletion rather than reversion. If you reckon it would be best, a restoration of the page content to the version at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Advertising_media_selection&oldid=638349678 and then a review and folding in of any relevant intermediate edits might be the way to go. Most of the changes since that version have been minor. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 02:27, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:    Thanks for your input. You are only the second person who has responded to anything I have ever posted on a talk page. It's so exciting! I have been on Wikpedia for less than 2 months, but came with the mission to improve/ clean-up some of the marketing/advertising pages - many of which are seriously sub-standard and conceptually flawed. It has not been an easy journey. Some pages are heavily patrolled by editors who automatically reject all new content. Other editors have attached themselves to me seemingly wanting to serve as my personal mentor and have given me some really, really bad advice - along the lines that all articles should be copied into the Sandbox where I am supposed to work on them and only replace the original when my revised version is perfect (which of course, no article can ever be perfect, so that seems to be a dead end). However, one bit of advice was that I should place notices of my intentions on the discussion page. So, that is what I have been doing. So far, have added extensive notes with suggestions for improvement on a dozen or more articles. In addition, I have totally revised about 6 articles, and am nearing completion on the 7th Advertising management. The page on advertising media selection is by no means the worst that I have seen to date. It lacks reliable sources and as mentioned has some conceptual/ definitional problems. But these should be relatively easy to fix. The problem is that I cannot do everything. I have decided not to touch pages that are heavily patrolled or where I have had very reasonable edits challenged. Instead I am focussing on putting up suggested topics and sub-topics for on the discussion pages of selected articles e.g. Integrated marketing communications; Marketing research; Positioning (marketing); Marketing - this is to get around having material constantly challenged and wasting time responding to challenges only to find that the challenger's concerns morph into new and different challenges. Now I am trying to find that are not heavily patrolled and devoting my energies to fixing them. I may get back to this current page when I have finished work on my current challenge, namely the article on Advertising management. BronHiggs (talk) 04:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll respond on your talk page... ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 07:18, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable content/ Definitional problems