Advertising was once very limited in its communication mediums, as the only method of advertising was by crying one’s wares in the marketplace. Advertising became more widespread with the invention of the printing press, and has spread even further with the inventions of the telegraph, radio, telephone, newspaper, magazines, televisions, computers, and the internet. Now, with the invention of social media dominating the world, advertising has been changed forever.
While this field was once limited to the printed word, newspapers and magazines today are finding that fewer and fewer people are buying printed media of any sort. Local TV stations are losing followers, and even national networks are noticing that more and more people are following their TV programmes online.
Experts are realising that social media sites are the most effective platforms for advertising. More than 750 million Facebook accounts exist, and millions of people watch viral videos on YouTube on a daily basis. While these are the main social media sites, there are hundreds of sites with many more visitors that never visit either Facebook or YouTube.
With so many people visiting these sites every day, advertising experts would be wasting an invaluable resource if they neglected to promote businesses on these social media sites. If only 1% of the people on Facebook saw an advertisement every day, that would still be more people than would see a physical advertisement in an entire month in major cities like New York, Tokyo, or Mexico City. As a result, social media sites are becoming the main platforms for companies to advertise, as millions of people share common interests that would cause them to pay attention to advertisements on their social media page. Social media sites provide advertisers with the ability to reach an exponentially larger audience than they ever could with printed or televised advertisement, and the range of demographics is far more expansive than could ever be achieved by any other form of advertising media.