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Traditional vs. Digital Advertising Strategies- Where to Spend?

As an advertising company, we dedicate most of our time to determining and evaluating the platforms that provide the most value to advertisement campaigns. We have witnessed that businesses are increasingly shifting towards digital advertising. Yet, while digital advertising is gaining more popularity each day, some businesses still prefer traditional advertising for their promotional activities. 

To explain the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of both major types of advertising, we have collected information and compiled a comprehensive article for you.

How Do Advertising Companies in Dubai Implement Ads?

There are two major types of advertising, one is for the traditional market while the other is for the digital marketplace. According to the most reputable advertising companies in Dubai, the difference between digital and traditional advertising is quite simple and has been described below:

1 Traditional Marketing:

How Do Advertising Companies in Dubai Implement Ads

It is a form of marketing that does not occur online, the media utilized in this type of advertising is mostly magazines, radio, billboards, broadcast television, newspaper, etc.

2 Digital Marketing:

Digital marketing involves the use of platforms and media that exist online. This includes online marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, mobile marketing, websites, etc.

New technologies like social media and search engine optimization contribute to the shifts in consumer attention and behavior. It is expected that such technologies have contributed to throwing numerous advertisements into a tailspin.  As a business or as an individual, you should only invest in what marketing strategies are best for your business and would help you reach your favored business goals. 

Each type of media used for advertising has its own set of pros and cons, benefits and costs, and strengths and weaknesses, for marketers and businesses. The factor that influences marketing and sales the most is consumer attention.

Shifts and Changes in Consumer Attention:

Attention, in terms of marketing, refers to listenership and viewership. Digital marketing has become even more important now due to the attention of consumers that it has captured. We no longer see people learning about the latest products, services, and sales through Sunday ads in the newspapers. This is because the way people engage has changed. 

The attention of consumers and customers is shifting to traditional from digital rapidly. While the attention that traditional media received has dropped significantly, digital marketing media has seen a considerable rise, so much so that if these trends have not overlapped yet, they are likely to do so in the near time. 

The shift of consumer attention from traditional to digital marketing media is so profound and obvious that it is impossible to ignore whether you are a business or a marketing agency.

The Decline in TV Viewers

The Decline in TV Viewers:

In the past, most of the advertising took place on TV since people spent a lot of time watching TV in the evening on weekdays and mornings on weekends. Even children watched cartoons constantly. 

However, if we look at it now, the viewership for TV has fallen significantly demographic from the ages between 2 and 49. This proves how vast the changes have spread. TV is still a source of marketing and advertising, due to the existence of the possibility of creating and growing a television audience.

Surveys have proved that the viewership of a few TV networks has increased in the last half-decade, whereas cable and broadcast networks have seen major declines in viewership.

Today, very few people even have TVs in their homes. Instead of getting subscriptions for cable networks, they don’t use, people now simply use streaming services that they can easily log in to and choose to avoid ads and commercials. Radio used to be the most popular marketing medium in the 1900s, after that came the era of TV advertising, and now internet advertising is the most popular one.

The shift of Attention & Its Effects on Investments:

When consumer attention shifts to other media, investors too make changes in their areas of investment to ensure that the position of their commodities is strategically right before their target customers. Digital advertising has earned a lion’s share of consumer attention and investments too, as a result. The investment in digital marketing and internet advertising has risen to more than $356 globally since 2020. It is expected to rise even further by $ 153 billion in the next two years. 

A good way to understand the direction of the flow of investments is to check the attention a particular advertising medium is receiving. Consumer attention can be determined by the views, likes, comments, reposts, replies, and number of shares each ad receives.

The attention from newspapers has declined to almost zero and they have lost almost all of their revenue. More than 60 percent of consumers admit that they almost never buy printed content, which marks it as an ineffective form of advertising. On the other hand, out-of-home advertising i.e., billboards, ads are shown before a movie, and signage, have seen considerable and consistent growth.

Deciding on The Right Tactic for Advertising:

With most of the consumer attention shifting to digital marketing and online advertising, all the major advertising companies are investing in digital media more than traditional ones. This confuses many owners of small businesses about whether or not to follow this lead. 

Digital marketing provides you with ease in tracking leads and learning how a consumer got into the marketing funnel. This data is later utilized to evaluate and improve the efficiency of the digital marketing strategies of businesses. This is achieved in various ways i.e.

UTM tracking, allows us to learn the precise channel through which a user converted through a code linked at the end of the URL. 

Google Analytics: This tool helps to determine how various users have interacted with the ads you have placed on Google. You can do this with various forms of ads i.e., PPC ads.

Advertising and Storytelling:

Previously, advertising could be simply done by telling a story of the product with the help of images and videos. Digital marketing, however, requires more effort than that i.e., businesses and brands can tell their own stories with search engine optimization. 

This type of marketing strategy enables the business to share its information, knowledge, and experience with the target audience while building rank in the search engine results.  

Advertising and Storytelling

One more influential and important factor of digital and internet advertising is social media, which can be used effectively to contact consumers directly be it locally or globally. While social media lets you reach wider prospective audiences, creating ads that are both interactive and informative is a process that remains challenging.

Social media ads entice users to learn more about businesses and brands, unlike banner ads, which demanded attention through cringe-worthy tactics. The former is more relevant and targeted, the products are the ones that we wish to buy due to their usefulness and the utility that can be derived from them.

Targeting VS Broadcasting:

Traditional ads are always broadcasted, which simply means that everyone sees them, whether the ads are relevant to them or not. Digitally advertised campaigns are made and sent out to a selected target audience with precision, according to demographics like age, gender, and profession.

Traditional advertisers cast a wide net with their ads and pay to show their ads to everyone even those who have nothing to do with the commodity being advertised and hope to capture the right audience. Whereas digital marketers pay only to target a selected audience with their campaigns, this drives more sales and profits by generating more effective and useful leads.

Conclusion:

We have put before you the things as they are with traditional and digital marketing both. It is now up to choose one of the two for your business, the type that is both cost-effective and efficient. Digital marketing in itself is considerably time-consuming, but yet another advantage of digital marketing is that you can outsource it to a reputable digital advertising company. 

If you wish to focus on your core business activities and wish to get a robust marketing strategy for your brand as well, your best bet is to outsource your advertising to a top digital marketing agency in Dubai like VDigitalX Marketing.

FAQs:

What are conventional ads?

Conventional ads refer to all commercial messages i.e., newspapers, radio, magazines, catalogs, TV, flyers, etc. It does not include teleshopping and its windows.

What is the difference between digital advertising and traditional advertising?

The basic difference between digital and traditional advertising is that the former focuses on the consumers’ needs and wants while the latter focuses on the commodity being advertised. Traditional marketing utilizes more conventional media, digital marketing utilizes the internet and the various platforms and strategies it offers.

What is the difference between conventional and digital media?

Conventional media is simply the traditional media i.e., newspapers, radio, magazines, TV, and other media that operate according to schedules. Digital media, on the other hand, refers to the media that operates through the web, i.e., different apps, social media, news sites, search engines, etc.

Stella Green

Stella Green

I am a Business student with a mindset to change how businesses work. I have researched and developed innovative ideas that alter and enhance business methods to a futuristic business model. I choose to write blogs and research papers that include facts and figures and a simple tone that allows me to communicate directly with fellow businessmen and women.

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