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The Organization of Advertising

15 January, 2016 - 09:52

There are within the advertising industry a wide variety of means by which advertising is created and placed in media. At one extreme, an individual might write and place his own classified ad in a newspaper in the hope of selling his daughter's canopy bed. At the other extreme, the advertiser employs a full-service advertising agency to create and place the advertisement, retaining only the function of final approval of plans developed by that agency. Significant specialization is developed within the full-service advertising agency to discourage clients from hiring any outside vendors or other parties to perform any of the various functions involved in planning and executing advertising programs for the various advertisers that the agency serves. Another organizational possibility is a fuIl-scale, in-house advertising department. This department may have total responsibility for all aspects of the advertisement, some of the tasks might be optioned out to ad agencies or other types of specialty organizations, e.g. production, talent, media placement. It is not unusual for a large corporation to employ all of these possibilities or to use different agencies for different products or for different parts of the country.

Whether or not the advertiser uses an advertising agency, does his advertising in-house, or uses some combination of the two depends upon a host of factors unique to each organization: available funds, level of expertise, expediency, and so forth. Regardless of the influencing factors, a number of basic functions must be performed by someone if creative and effective advertisements are to be placed:

  • what products, institutions, or ideas are to be advertised;
  • who is to prepare advertising programs;
  • who the organization engages and gives policy and other direction to the advertising agency, if any agency is used;
  • who in the organization has the authority to develop advertising work and/or approves the advertising programs presented by the advertising agency;
  • who pays the advertising bill;
  • who determines the extent to which advertisements help reach the stated objectives.3