Advertising is important. If you’re not sure why, this article may serve as a reminder. In this article, you will see a comparison of traditional media advertising costs vs. online media marketing costs. It can help you make a more informed decision as to what approach in advertising may fit your business best.

Firstly, “advertising” and “marketing” are two different things. Wikipedia defines “marketing” as “the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers.” It goes on to add “It is a critical business function for attracting customers.” Wikipedia defines “advertising” as “a form of communication for marketing and used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action.” So to be clear, advertising is one form of communication used in marketing whereas marketing is a process that contains many different forms of communication.

Sample of Traditional Media Advertising (In This Case, a Major National Newspaper)

Below we have some actual numbers from a media kit of a major newspaper. As you will see from the snippets and from our mathematical break-down, a 3-inch by 3-inch advertisement (9 column inches) would cost:

• $5,994 for one day
• $36,981 total for 7 days ($5,283 per day)
• $133,308 for 28 days ($4,761 per day)
• $359,856 for 84 days ($4,284 per day) Continue reading →