What are the strengths/advantages and weaknesses/disadvantages of using advertising in the promotional mix?

Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, good, service, or idea by an identified sponsor. There are several advantages to a firm using advertising in its promotional mix. Advertising (1) is an efficient means for reaching large numbers of people; (2) can be attention-getting; (3) can communicate specific product benefits to prospective buyers; (4) can be controlled in terms of (a) what is said and, to some extent, (b) to whom the message is sent by paying for the advertising space, and (c) allows the company to decide when to send its message (which includes how often).
(5) The nonpersonal aspect of advertising also has its advantages. Once the message is created, the same message is sent to all receivers in a market segment.
(6) If the pictorial, text, and brand elements of an advertisement are properly pretested, an advertiser can ensure the ad's ability to capture consumers' attention and trust that the same message will be decoded by all receivers in the market segment. However, the disadvantages of advertising are (1) it has high absolute costs; (2) it is difficult to receive good feedback; and (3) the lack of direct feedback makes it difficult to know how well the message was received. See Figure 18-2.