Ancillary Task - Why do advertisers use magazines as a form of advertising?

Advertisers use magazines as a form of advertising for a variety of reasons: enhancing a products awareness, targeting a specific audience, using pictures to establish a mood, grab the readers attention and many more. 

Firstly an advantage that advertisers have when using magazines us that they can specifically aim the advert a a target group, a group of people who would be interested in the product. Using pictorial influences they can then grab there attention. This will then lead to the reader, who has been is typically targeted, now focused and engaged with the product being advertised. In the case of advertising a music, advertisers have the ability to pin point there exact audience. This would normally be assed by researchers seeing that a certain type of people read what magazine. An advantage with an advert for a music album is that it is easier to choose an institution for your advert. For example, if you were to publish an advert for a ‘Scouting for girls’ album then the advertiser would use NME magazine as they specialise in indie music. Where as if an advertiser was to advertise a Slipknot album it would be appropriate to advertise it in Metal Hammer magazine as they specialse in heavy metal. 

Advertisers also use magazines to advertise because they have a lot more freedom with pictorial marketing. As the advertisers have already selected the magazine they wish to use they may possibly have a target market. For example if you were to advertise in the ‘Metal Hammer’ magazine you would be able to use harsh, violent images to capture the attention of Heavy metal fans. This would be possible as the target market for the magazine is 16 years and on wards so the chances of a child seeing it is very thin. 

Although a specific audience can be targeted magazine averts are very costly. It costs more to advertise in a magazine than it does a news paper. The advert will be much bigger and will require more colour, which can also be seen as a benefit. On the terms of colour, advertisers can use special printing effects like UV glossing, embossing and laminating. This makes the advert more appealing and resembles quality within the product which most customers would seek to buy. In the case of a CD then the customers are seeking quality within music, in other words an album that they are going to like listening to. 

In conclusion magazine adverts are a very precise form of advertising as the reader demographics can be targeted almost perfectly. With Products like albums advertisers have a wide variety genres of music within different magazines, for example, Heavy Metal you would choose ‘Metal Hammer’. For Classic rock you would choose ‘Mojo’, ‘Rolling Stone’ or ‘Classic Rock’. If you were to advertise a new band which are considered to be ‘cool’ by teenagers you would focus on magazines like ‘Kerrang’ with a lower target market age.