Television is believed to be the most authoritative, influential and exciting of all mediums. It is often said that television is the ideal medium for advertising because of its ability to combine visual images, sound, motion and color. These characteristics allow the advertiser maximum opportunity to develop the most creative and imaginative ad messages as compared to any other medium. However, in spite of several advantages over other media, television does have certain problems that limits, or even prevent, its use in specific situation.
The greatest advantage of television is its ability to present the advertising message in the most unique way. The integration of sight, sound, motion and color offers extraordinary flexibility to make dramatic and lifestyle portrayals of products and services. The commercials can also help build an emotional association with the brand. The commercial can also help build an emotional association, or create entertaining message that might make an otherwise unexciting and common product seem to be interesting. Television is quite adept at communicating humorous, serious, realistic, or tongue-in-check commercials.
If the nature of the product is such that a demonstration would convey the ad message more effectively, television is the most suitable ad medium. The print ads of product such as autos, television and microwave ovens can show the product and provide and provide information about their feature and benefits but a television commercial can put the audience in a position where he/she can actually sense driving or operating the gadget. This can definitely make an impact not possible by any other advertising media. People generally rate television as the most credible source of information. Advertisers gain a qualitative edge because television enjoys the most positive image of all media.
Advertising on television makes it possible to reach a large number of audiences. Advertisers are refining their audience coverage by appealing to group with specific interests, such as news, sports, music. Though television offers unsurpassed creativity and reaches large audience, it is an expensive medium to advertising. Beside the high cost of media time, the cost of producing good quality commercials is quite commercials are quite high.
Media planning has become fairly complex and risky with the increase in cost of various media and the proliferation of media choices. The planners have to critically analyze the choice of media class, subclass and media vehicle. Beside new and emerging media, the process of making a choice among alternative within the same, medium becomes complicated because of wide range of alternatives.
