The effectiveness of SMS,Internet and other advertising for business Essay

The effectiveness of SMS,Internet and other advertising for business incubators - Essay Example This is a relatively new form of advertising, yet one that has already generated a wide range of textual sub-types. (Hughes, 1998) For example, there are simple 'banners' pasted across WebPages advertising a particular service or product; there are whole sites run by specific companies, such as Coca-Cola or Benetton; and there are mailshots that arrive in people's email boxes, in the form of brochures, memos and letters. In addition to these more obvious forms of advertising, there are now, of course, Internet versions of some of the texts such as university prospectuses and church posters (for an example of the latter, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk and click on 'religion'.Although some concern has been expressed that the standard of advertising has been poor on the Internet and that this has damaged the chances of dot-com companies to turn a profit, there is no doubt that Internet texts can be very imaginative because of the resources available to them for interactivity. What follows i s a starting point for thinking about the ways WebPages offer a different kind of read from paper pages. Getting some idea about this will be important in order to assess how online advertising texts might work. (Judge, 1998) WebPages and SMS as Advertising Tools For incubators firms advertising, WebPages are organised very differently from their paper counterparts. In fact, the term 'page' when applied to an Internet text is a metaphor. Electronic texts are not formed of pages at all, but we are encouraged to think in this way because it makes electronic discourse seem familiar and approachable. Electronic texts are a bit like a set of Russian dolls: as you read a screenful of text and click a link, you are taken to a new set of information and new links. You can keep going until all the links run out which, in some cases, will take the reader a long way from their starting point (often called a 'homepage'). This process is sometime referred to as non-linearity: paper texts are described as linear because they are processed line-by-line, while electronic texts can be read in many different ways, with readers jumping between sections of text, between different pages, and between different Internet sites in a non-linear fashion. (Solomon, 1995 ) As will be inferred from reading the above, electronic texts are often seen as offering more opportunity for interactivity than paper texts. Readers can scroll pages in various directions, can click through to new information via links, can stop a page working altogether, and can, in many cases, save and archive a text in their own files. Interactivity works both ways, however: it isn't just about the reader being active, since the availability of certain kinds of electronic tools also allows a webpage to be in motion in the way a paper page can only dream about. Animated graphics allow language and images to dance and sing (provided the computer has a sound card, in the latter case); pictures can dissolve and re-form to show narrative progression of an idea; a question can be asked in the text, then disappear and form itself into an answer. Line drawings and logos can appear to come to life, and the only limits to colour, glitter and other appearances of physicality are