Marketing and Distribtion

 Aim: to investigate how media products are advertised to audiences

Advertising - Payments from brands in return for the placement of promotional material on pages or during production - could be in the form of commercial breaks, or via product placement.

    - Traditional advertising

    - Digital advertising

Above-the-line Advertising - where mass media is used to promote brands. These include conventional media such as television and radio advertising, print and the internet.

Distribution:

1. How a product or brand reaches an audience (web, television, cinema tc.)

2. Its marketing and promotion 

Technological convergence - allows audience to access media content from multiple platforms on one device. It involves the coming together fo information and communication technologies to create new ways of producing and distributing products and services to media audiences.

- A black box is a device that supplies us with all of or informational and media requirements (eg. a smartphone).

Web 2.0

- The dot.com boom (1998-2001) was a huge rise in the number of internet-based companies.

- There was then shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

- It was the possibility of 'staying' online and interacting online which really changed things.

Impact of Online Distribution

- Music and television can now be downloaded, streamed or simulcasted at the click of a button - without ever having to leave your armchair. It is available to you whenever, wherever.

Simulcasting - when a media product is broadcast both online and via traditional media at the same time. In television terms, it could refer to programme being broadcast on two different channels (such as the French Open tennis tournament).

Narrowcast channels - television channels that distribute special interest (niche) content. 

Below-the-line advertising - the distribution of pamphlets, stickers, promotions etc. at the point of sale.