This article throws light upon the top six types of advertising industry jobs. The types are: 1. Advertising Specialists 2. Media Sales Representatives 3. Media Buyers 4. Advertising Researchers 5. Advertising Creators 6. Advertising Managers.
Type # 1. Advertising Specialists:
Advertising is a field in which there is great specialisation. The practice of advertising is too demanding in training and experience for any one to become expert in all phases. Instead, people who work in advertising tend to specialize along functional lines, and they tend to work for firms that are equally specialised.
Type # 2. Media Sales Representatives:
Media sales representatives (frequently called ‘media reps’), sell advertising time and space. The firms that market advertising time and space are the media themselves—radio and television stations, newspapers, magazines, and others.
The specialists who sell advertising are called media representatives. They may work directly for the medium whose time or space they sell or they may work for separate firms of sales agents that represent a number of media.
Media representatives call on potential buyers of advertising—generally advertising agencies and advertiser firms—explaining the merits of the product, taking orders, and handling buyer-seller communication.
Type # 3. Media Buyers:
The specialist who is the counter part of the media sales representative is the media buyer. Most of these specialists work for advertising agencies, although some are retained by advertisers and some work for firms of media specialists who offer media buying services to both advertising agencies and advertisers.
The media buying specialist helps decide what media should be used for a product, purchases the media, and controls and evaluates the performance of the media purchased.
Type # 4. Advertising Researchers:
Measurement of the effectiveness of advertising and measurement of the size of the media audiences are two of the very important functions performed by advertising researchers. However, many advertising researchers work for independent research services, gathering information that is then sold to advertisers and agencies.
Type # 5. Advertising Creators:
To the general public, a job in advertising means creating advertisements. This most glamorous of advertising functions is the speciality of copy writers and art directors. Copy writers write the words used in print or broadcast commercials.
Art directors design and illustrate print advertisements and they design the Video action in television commercials. Most of these creative specialists work for advertising agencies or for advertisers, but some are free lancers, selling their services to agencies or advertiser firms.
Type # 6. Advertising Managers:
The advertising jobs described is highly specialised, focusing on one aspect of advertising. The generalists in the advertising industry are the advertising managers. Their function is to plan the advertising effort and to implement and control the plan using the advertising specialists.
These managers may work for advertiser firms, where they are usually titled advertising manager or advertising director. Advertising agencies also employ managers of advertising to plan, direct, and control the advertising programs of their clients. These managers are usually called account executives, account representatives, client representatives, or some similar title.