CCT+300+Lab+5

=Lab 5 =

What is the difference between advertising methods used in the real world and the virtual world? Please explain.

Real world advertising methods and virtual world advertising methods differ in many ways. The main difference is their physical existence. Real world advertising methods are in the form of newspaper/ magazine ads, billboards, TV commercials and in movies. However in the virtual world, advertising methods come in the form of e-mails, banner ads, online commercials and popups. Another difference between these two types of advertising methods is their cost. Real life advertising methods cost a lot more than virtual advertising methods. Real life methods cost a lot in labour, production costs and material costs. However virtual advertising costs are very inexpensive. Virtual advertising methods are inexpensive because everything is created virtually. Only the labour to create the advertisement is required for the virtual world as production costs are almost none and material costs are none as they are digital. Advertising campaigns online are calculated in terms of CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) and CPC (Cost per Click). This is relatively inexpensive and much more effective as it only charges you depending on how many people it needs to reach. You can also pick which country, which sites and other details of where you want the advertisement to show.

Most new virtual advertising methods however are free. This is done through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. These social networking sites allow you to advertise by spreading the word to many people at the same time. This allows you to spread your advertisement very fast and for free. Companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and many others spent almost nothing on advertising costs. It was all done for free online and by spreading the word to large amounts of people.

Real world advertising methods however do have an advantage when it comes to targeting a specific audience. They use demographics and location specific advertisements to better target their audience. For example a TTC advertisement is much more effective in Downtown Toronto than in Mississauga. Therefore we are seeing a huge rise in virtual world advertising methods in our society as it is faster, inexpensive and can target a much larger and diverse audience.