Redefinition Of Advertising ——A Systematic Analysis Of Conceptual Elements In The Term Advertising

The thesis argues that the new media technology,especially the broad application of big data in the field of marketing＆advertising,has radically transformed the traditional model of advertising transaction,and accelerated the process of professionalization of the service market of digital marketing,rendering the concept of "advertising" disputed by academics and practitioner both at home and abroad.As the media moving from "mass media" to "digital media",the audience has experienced a parallel evolution tendency of from "mass" to "niche audience"and to"precise audience" and "participatory audience",which also transformed the advertising effects model from "persuasion" and "eliciting" to "impact".Under such condition,academic begin to wonder if advertising is mass-orientated broadcasting or niche-orientated narrowcasting,is content marketing or precise marketing,or even if it is the time to permanently abandon this concept.For exploring the very question of what advertising and its connotation exactly are,this article comprehensively reviews the relevant literature.For some scholars,advertising is the product of mass media period,and for some others,it is essentially the instrument for marketing,and others believe it just belongs to communication and is part of the process of disseminating information,and still others insist that the informative function is precisely the very essential of advertising.Judging from the distinct descriptions of the essence of the advertising,scholars further deduce from them the future existing forms of the adverting,and propose such propositions as advertising is dyingout,is going to be platform,tends to be informationization or data-based model.Consequently,the very concept of "advertising" is far less clear under the condition of digital media communication,or more specifically,there would be no consensus about it among the practitioners and thus influence the its future trends for its very ambiguity.In other words,the term of "advertising" is hard to highlight the very essence of the concept of advertising.Theoretically,the term will ultimately be substituted by other terms for the misnomer.So the question of what exactly the advertising is has become a practical problem that need be solved urgently.This research attempts to resolve the puzzle and clearly answer what exactly the advertising,give a straight answer to which one is true or more factually correct by testing all the above mentioned abstract propositions.The author will explore the question from three correlated questions.Research I was an exploratory study,which tease out 2400 definitions of advertising in history and make analysis of them from the methodology of semantic network.The author observes that there exist different key elements in advertising during different media period.In the primordial advertising,the key elements are what and with what effect;In the printing media period,three key elements contained in the advertising,i.e.what effect,what and which channel;the key elements further evolved during the electronic media period and involved three elements into its definition,i.e.who,what and what effects.However,there exist two different conclusions about the key elements,for one definition,the key elements contain the elements of who,what and what effect,and the other only contain these two elements of what and What effect.By conclusion,taken together,the elements of what items and what effect are the only most common defining elements across times.So,the genus concept of advertising should be identified as"information communication" Further,as a product of commercial society,a distinctive characteristics definition,i.e."commercial symbols".A narrowly drawn definition should be put as "advertising is about communicaiton of commercial information".Based on research Ⅰ,research Ⅱ is description-oriented and concentrates on the range of application of the definition made above,and further modify the conclusion made in research I.By focusing on the element of which channel,research Ⅱ makes an content analysis of varies of advertising represented on all kinds of official media transaction platform and files for inviting businessmen for investment.The author observed that the definition of adverting from the media’s official operation is that branding is a sponsoring campaign aimed at making consumers to behavior in the advertisers’ favor and thus is an paid information-disseminating activities,and contains five elements in it,i.e.from who,what,what effect,to whom,payment,and implies both mass and nonpersonal elements.Compared with the above narrowly drawn definition,this definition includes more elements of for who,to whom,pay and both mass and nonpersonal characters.Research Ⅲ is an explanatory research.It explores the conclusions made in research Ⅰ and Ⅱ,and detects which characters will be related when make judge of advertising.This part aims at identifing a final decision about the definition of advertising,and tries to test and perfect the conclusion made in research Ⅰ and Ⅱ.Embarking from the elements of for whom,this part explores the definition in the minds of the audience by the methodology of questionnaire survey.By analyzing the advertising’s stimulus identified by the respondents and its the characters,the author finds that the definition of advertising from the perspective of"for whom" can be defined as the the information-disseminating activity serving the brand Combining the three conclusions,the thesis defines advertising as the information-disseminating activity serving the brand,which can be interested in two ways,one way is the advertising is a kind of information-disseminating sponsored by the brand and aimed at maneuvering the consumers to behavior in the advertisers’favor;the other way is that advertising can be broadly defined as the information-disseminating activity objectively favorable for the brand.