Tyler Fugazzie

Advertising is Everywhere

Everyone hates ads. Except for their favorite ads. The ad makers all want to be Don Draper but the industry is not that sexy anymore. I’ve never worked directly in advertising so I can’t say how many Don Draper wannabes actually exist but I assume the number is high.

In the United States, advertising spending in 2023 was $515.1 billion. That’s a massive number. In 2025, a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LIX is expected to cost at least $7 million. In many ways advertising is a flex by companies to show they have enough money to even advertise in the first place. Your attention is incredibly valuable. Pretty much every company is competing for it. This should make us feel wanted and special.

You see ads online, on billboards, on subways, in sports stadiums, in newspapers, in magazines, on TV, through the mail, at events, on the radio, in the sky. Basically wherever available space exists, you can guarantee someone is trying to figure out how to put ads on it or in it. I’m waiting for space and dream advertising as the next frontiers.

While the advertising industry is fairly new, the concept of advertising has existed for a long time in history. The first written ad was a papyrus created in 3000 BC by an Egyptian slaveholder. The earliest known advertising was oral, such as bamboo flutes played to sell candy, town criers in ancient cities appointed to call out announcements and news, and street criers. You can learn more about the history of advertising here.

The Persistence of Advertising 

It’s been around for a long time so it’s likely to persist for a long time too. Today’s consumers are sophisticated consumers though so a big challenge for advertisers is to basically advertise without advertising. This is why you see things like “sponsored content” on social media, which is a way to make ads feel more naturally aligned with what you’re organically looking for and interested in as you spend time online. 

To function properly, an ad needs to be repeated and pervasive. The more frequently a person is exposed to an ad, the more likely they are to be influenced by an ad. This makes sense as the more you hear or see something, the more likely you are to feel favorable toward it and remember it. Repetition usually creates meaning.

Despite popular belief, the goal of advertising is not to annoy you. While we think we’re immune to ads, we’re ripe for them when we find ourselves in the target audience for a certain ad campaign. For example, if I see a TV commercial for a car, I just see it as noise because I’m not interested in or looking to buy a car but if I see an ad for how to increase blog traffic, I’m likely to pay attention. It all depends on what a consumer’s needs and wants are at a given time and these are always in flux.

Advertising Objectives

Looking at Facebook’s advertising performance goals provides a good framework for understanding the objectives of advertising.

Awareness

This is probably the most basic type of campaign you can run. You’re doing this to let people know your company exists or your product(s) and/or service(s) exist. You need people to know who you are before you can hope to have them engage with your brand and eventually become customers, which is the primary goal of business overall. Companies that are already household names will still run ads for awareness to keep them in the minds of consumers and do things like brand differentiation and brand positioning. The marketplace is dynamic and can change in an instant so it’s important for brands to stay on top of these varying shifts.

Traffic

This is to drive people to your website or social media or physical store. These types of ad campaigns require some sort of call-to-action to bring people to some touchpoint owned by the brand. This is part of the sales funnel to eventually turn that traffic into customers to make money. 

Engagement

Taking action is the name of the game here. This can take various forms especially in an online world where you can use this to get people to click on a link for a landing page of a limited time promotion your brand is running or encourage people to talk about your brand in person or online to serve as brand ambassadors and extend the level of promotion you’re able to do. A person may be suspicious of seeing a direct ad from a brand but if a brand engages their friend, and their friend tells them about a promotion, they might be more receptive to engaging with it themselves.

Leads

A lead is a potential customer or stakeholder. Since organizations exist in the public sector with goals like getting volunteers, it’s not necessarily always about trying to make money even though paid advertising is more likely to be used by private sector companies looking to make money. These campaigns rely on making sure they reach your target audience.

Sales

Businesses need to make money. It’s why they exist. While there are ways to raise capital without working directly with customers, the way companies generate revenue is by generating sales. This is the end game of running ads. You want awareness, traffic, engagement, and leads to all lead to getting someone to spend money on your product(s) and/or service(s).

Remember: Frequency of Ad Exposure is Key

As we’ve said before, the frequency of advertising is a crucial component in meeting the objectives of ads so brands are likely running multiple types of campaigns for varying durations of time.

Maybe you run an awareness campaign for a month, then an engagement campaign for two months, then a sales campaign for a month based on a limited time offer for a new product. 

How to Approach Creating Advertising Campaigns: Work Backwards from Objectives

When crafting an ad campaign, you want to start with the end in mind. Begin with your objective and be specific about it; “we want 10,000 people to learn about a new product line we’re offering” or “we want 200,000 people to visit our website or we want to increase sales by 15% for Q4.”

Once you formulate a clear objective, you need to consider your target audience. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they care about? What advertising mediums are they most exposed to? Figuring out your target audience then informs which form to use such as a billboard vs. a digital ad though for many campaigns at larger organizations, you’re going to do a mix of mediums to reach the right audience at the right times.

After figuring out your advertising forms, you’ll come up with your budget and timeline. How much can you spend to meet the objective in a cost effective way with a high ROI (return on investment) and how long do you need to run your campaigns for?

The element of advertising you want to consider last, only after you have the objective, target audience, medium, budget, and timeline, is the content of the ad. Many people like to approach this in a different order where they think it’s all about coming up with a creative or clever ad and then retrofitting that to meet the needs of the other elements but that’s a surefire way to get an ad that meets the ad makers needs and not the target audience’s needs.

The content of an ad should have a compelling headline, informative yet concise details, and if applicable, like to drive leads or engagement, a clear call-to-action for the consumer to take. Since ads are so prolific, there are hundreds and thousands of real world examples you can consult to see what makes a great ad and what lessons you can learn for crafting your own successful ad(s). Research and study ad campaigns that appear to be targeted to the kind of audiences you’re looking to reach.

I can help you advertise 🙂

Email me if you want more advice or if you want to hire me for a flexible fee to build an ad campaign or design ad content for you. In terms of building a campaign, I’m most familiar with using digital platforms such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads but I can help you develop an outline to determine objective, target audience, medium, budget, timeline, and content. I have experience designing print ads in addition to digital ones.