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Developing Adlines for Print and Web Advertisement - What's common and what's different?

Let's start from the Basics…

Be in print or online, advertising has got one target and that is to sell products and to sell them MORE. So, the first hurdle that any advertisement faces is to grab the attention of the potential customers. There are many things under the sun that are more interesting than an advertisement. For example, do you really think it is possible to hold back a guy from the score of the football match or from stock prices than to read an advertisement? But then, if you want your print advertisement to be successful you have to do that.

For the online advertisement things are certainly tougher because people here do not read, they just SEE the pages. With browsing speeds getting faster, the advertisement should be really focused to grab the attention of the readers, in fact to be perfect in the context of the web, we should say visitors. This is the fundamental difference between print advertisement and web advertisements and much has been said and done on this topic. But at the end of the day both forms of advertising get equal share of viewer attention, at least if we consider the amount of time an advertisement is seen.

Take out the stop watch…

While it is believed that a print ad is seen by a reader for few more seconds when compared to the online advertisement. On the other hand, an online ad is seen by more number of targeted audiences. To add to this, the life span of a print advertisement is a few hours while an online advertisement is there for as much more time as per your needs and budgets. Geographical boundary is of course another aspect where the online advertisement scores over the print media, but then that is not a benefit for all the products. So, if we consider all these accumulatively, it will be clear that it is not the time frame that is the issue.

Though much thought has been put to determine the amount of time spend by the viewer to se the advertisement, it is of little benefit from the advertisers point of view. What matters most is to hit the right cord of the reader or the viewer and once you have done this, half of your job is done, i.e. you have the reader to make your point. Now everything depends on how well you present your point and send the message across.

“Words are all I have, to take your heart away…”

Word and only words are the best effective way to send then message across and to create the desired effect.

• This is the one area where the most striking difference lies between the online advertising and print advertising. Ideally, on print advertising adlines should trigger THOUGHTS while on the online media the words should trigger ACTION.
  
  
• So, it is clearly two different ways of approaching the adlines. In print media the lines should be more emotional while for the online media it should be much more direct, focused and should talk in terms of profits that the reader will eventually get.

Looks do matter…

The biggest limitation for the print advertising is perhaps the presentation, especially if we compare it with the online advertising. There is nothing much that you can do to present a print ad. The options are really limited in fact to images and words.

While for the online advertisements the options are limitless, you can use graphics, animations, sounds, anything and everything to get the attention of the viewer so here the adlines are really supported well with other elements.

It is not the Lions. It is the money that matters…

All said and done, but what matters at the end is the ‘Return on Investment'. Your client will never let you do away with things if they do not get the desired result from the advertising campaign. There are so many ways to measure the success of any advertising campaign but online advertising surely have an edge over the print media in this aspect as well. Analytic software and websites provide comprehensive analysis of the viewer response and keep track of each and every action that was triggered by the advertisement. But for the print advertisement, we have limited ROI tracking tools and need to rely on the sales figures along with assumptions that hardly give us the right figures.

Observe…Adopt…Modify…Excel…

What is the benefit of the analysis, if we cannot modify things to transform the tide in our favor? Online advertisements give us enough room to modify the advertising campaign with least effort and cost to make the corrections. When an in depth analysis shows the errors in a campaign, an online advertisement can be modified to suit the need of the day. On the other hand, it is not that easy with the print advertisement. If you have to change, you need to begin from the scratch all over again!

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