Classified Ads – The Advertising Solution For The Man On The Street

Classified advertisement is a category of advertisement particularly tuned to meet the common mans advertising needs. The main advantage of classified advertising over the traditional one is that it is cheap and anybody can post an advertisement. Thus, private tutors and parents of children who need tutoring can find each other through classified ads. In the print media, such ads are classified into different categories to make it easy browsing for the pursuer.

The main categories one would usually find in the classified ad section of a newspaper are real estate, rent, automotive, pets and situations vacant etc. Certain magazines and papers like “Freeads” and “Admag” are dedicated entirely to listing classified ads. These ads are also found in the yellow pages section of many popular publications.

A classified ad may consist of a few lines that sometimes generically describe the product, services or goods that are to be sold and at other times go into specific details. For example, there are ads that sometimes list automobiles for sale but don’t include the pricing or make of the automobile but only a contact number. There are also other kinds of ads that state specific details such as the color, year, make and model and price information for the product that is on sale. The reason for this kind of variation is the mechanism employed by the publisher to charge for these ads.

This diversity can be attributed to the cost factors that are involved. The cost of placing a classified ad is usually determined by a variety of factors like the number of words used, the size of the font, the color of the text, the space consumed by the ad on a page as well as its position on a page. The use of graphics or pictures or even highlighting an ad might end up costing the advertiser more than usual.

The classified ads industry generates an annual income close to 100 billion dollars worldwide. This is not just from the ads displayed in the printed media though. There are television channels that air classified advertisements during non prime time slots. Cable television operators also make a quick buck out of selling local precuts of the cable network in the neighborhood. Radio stations also air advertisements in between programs that are sometimes funny and ear catching.

The classified advertising business that is focused on print media is increasingly facing competition from the emergence of web based advertising portals like craigslist, gumtree, sulekha etc. These sites allow the posting of detailed ads which are more specific and do not depend on short monosyllabic sentences to convey their meanings compared to the print media publications.

The good thing about such websites that most of them are free and ensure easily accessible to the public by enabling options to browse through categories or search using key terms. These portals generate their income from online banner based advertisement and pop up advertisements that convert each click into income for the website.

The cost effectiveness and accessibility that these online advertising solutions offer contribute to their immense popularity among advertisers. As more and more people become net savvy every day, these sites continue to draw more and more advertisers from traditional print media advertising.