Internet Page Advertising

Since I finished my research on Viral advertising, I have seen that a lot of big companies use various internet sites to advertise their films. Popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter are at the front of popular websites to advertise on. This involves both advertising from their OWN actual Twitter or Facebook page, or paying the social networkingsite money to advertise on the side of the internet page. Inthe modern day, Millions of people use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and therefore this is a massive base for people and a brilliant place for companies to advertise if it is done effectively.

To the right is a screenshot of Universal Pictures official twitter account writing a tweet in Early October about trailers for films which are upcoming from their company.

This tweet is intended for people who are following them to look at and gain information about the trailers and release date of the upcoming films. This can also act like a small version of a viral ad because people who followed 'UniversalPics' on twitter can 'ReTweet' this particular tweet so people who are following themcan also see it. They may alsotweet this tweet and so on. As well as having an official account on twitter, you can have promoted tweets and trends which will make the companies tweet appear to a wider audience. A 'Trend' is what people in certain areas are talking about in their tweets, the most popular trends will appear on the Twitter homepage so everyone can see it. A 'promoted Trend' will mean that the trend which the company, charity or person has started will mean the trend will be at the top of the trend list so everyone can see it. Twitter also gives you the option to change your location so you can see the 'trends' in different locations, if a trend is promoted, it will appear as the top and most popular trend in every location in the United Kingdom.

Below are the screenshots for Twitter page where you can make an apply for an advertised tweet, trend or even account. They all have the aim of broadening their audience and generally their fan base. If this promoted service was done effectively and successfully, it is a very clever way of finding new fans for the films as the first part of anyone buying tickets to see a film is informing them that the film is being released soon. The Screenshot on the right is the Trends section on the Twitter homepage for United Kingdom. There is no promoted or advertised trends at the moment, as they are signified and showed to be promoted ones. This has a bigger effect with bigger companies who have a wider catchment area and more followers. As I have previously touched on, bigger companies do have twitter to advertise their films and give information out on twitter, and it is quite effective to urge people to go and see the film aswell as giving information out about the film itself, the company and films it may also release in the future.

There is also the same type of sponsored links on Facebook and they work the same way to Twitter but in just they are advertisement space on the side which companies buy and give money to Facebook to advertise there and gives a link to the proper companies website where you can purchase their product, this also makes the brand a more popular and well-known name which in return makes their money they paid to advertise their product or company worth-while. Below is a screenshot of how the advertisements work on Facebook. The amount of people who like these pages can be in the hundreds of thousands and even millions which proves that Social networking sites have a massive catchment area, especially for younger people and the student population.