The most important decision that a company has to make regarding advertising

The most important decision that a company has to make regarding advertising is where to advertise. We refer to these means of communication as "the media". There are three categories of media: print, broadcast, and direct. Today, we are going to describe each of these categories and discuss their importance and usefulness in advertising.
   The first category, the print media, consists of printed information sources; in other words, newspapers and magazines. Let’s talk first about newspapers, which receive more money from advertisements each year than any other medium. This is because newspaper advertising has several outstanding advantages. First of all, nearly everybody reads newspapers. Therefore, newspaper ads reach huge numbers of people. Moreover, newspapers are generally local. This allows small, local businesses to advertise directly to their potential customers. Third, newspaper advertising is relatively cheap; so the ad can be as long as the advertiser wants, and it can also be repeated. On the other hand, newspaper ads have no color, and they are not very exciting and glamorous. For this reason, you don’t find ads, say, for expensive cars in newspapers. Instead, you find these ads in the second type of print medium, magazines.
   For the advertiser, the greatest advantage of magazines is that they have specialized groups of readers. In other words, the people who read Car and Driver are probably not the same people who read Glamour, which is a women’s magazine, or The New Republic, a political magazine. Obviously, an advertiser will place his ad in the magazine where it will probably be seen by people who are interested in his product. So the advantage of advertising in a magazine is that it allows a business to direct its ads to the people who are most interested in the product. The big disadvantage of magazine advertisement is that it can be very expensive.
   Let’s move along now and talk about the broadcast media, by which we mean radio and television. These also have both advantages and disadvantages. First radio. Radio has two of the same advantages as newspapers: almost everybody listens to it, and it’s usually local. The disadvantages of radio ads are that they must be short and that they are not permanent in the way printed ads are.
   Millions of dollars are spent each year on radio ads, but millions more are spent on television advertising. You can easily understand why. Of all the media, TV, with sound, movement, and color, is the most dramatic, so the ads are easy to remember. Television ads are viewed by millions of people all over the country because, first of all, almost everybody watches TV, and second, because most TV programs are broadcast nationally. These are the great advantages of TV advertising. On the other hand, ads on TV are enormously expensive. For example, a thirty-second commerical during the evening can cost $ 150, 000. Obviously, only large companies can afford to advertise on television.
   There is one more category of media that is used extensively in advertising. These are the direct media. The most common direct medium is the mail, and direct mail advertising is a very big business. The advantage of advertising by mail is that the ad goes directly in the potential customer’s hands. However, many people don’t bother to read these ads; in fact, we call them "junk mail" and often throw them away without even opening the envelope.
   Another direct medium is billboards; these are the huge signs that you see whenever you drive down the street. Billboards are useful because they are colorful and easy to see, and the message is permanent. However, the message must be short enough for drivers to read as they pass by.
   The third type of direct medium is signs and posters. They are usually used in what is called "point of purchase" advertising--that is, ads that appear in the same place where the product is being sold. Its great advantage is that it is cheap.