Outlines planning considerations, client approval, ordering, trafficking, recordkeeping, billing, and paying. This Guide includes a glossary, history of newspapers, and appendices with buy authorization, insertion order, standard invoice, rate card, and individual media. Revised June 2009.

This guide is designed to provide all involved in media research with a review of the language, concepts, and tools of today’s media world. As the new millennium continues, expect new data sources and tools to become available to answer more and more vital questions that advertisers are asking about how their advertising and media […]

With literally thousands of publications to choose from, how does one go about evaluating, planning, and buying print vehicles on behalf of an advertiser client? That’s where this guide can help you. It is intended to be a primer on planning and buying space in consumer magazines, to lead the novice through a number of […]

While most other advertising media are intrusive, Yellow Pages is distributed to virtually every home and business but is accessed at the consumer’s discretion, usually when a consumer is ready to take action. Knowledge of this powerful advertising medium is the first step in utilizing it to its fullest capacity. This guide was written as […]

This booklet is meant to help and inform anyone who is interested in learning about how to market to an individual, get a response, and capture and count that response to measure marketing efforts in terms of revenue versus expenses. It includes sections on direct mail, direct response print and broadcast, new electronic media, and […]

“Guide to Local Cable Television Implementation” assists the reader in the development of the fundamental skills and systems for the planning and buying of local cable. This guide provides procedures, techniques, and terminology associated with the implementation of local cable television. While every client and agency will have its own set of objectives, we believe […]

This guide serves as a guide in grounding and training media personnel in the development of the necessary basic skills and systems in planning and buying local television. It provides an outline of the procedures, techniques and language of the business of buying local television. As much use is made of a wide variety of […]

Emotional vs. Rational Appeals

In 2010, the level of new business activity was robust. That is one of the findings in the “4A’s New Business Activity & Resource Survey Report”. The survey was developed to help members benchmark levels of new business activity and calibrate the agency resources involved with agency new business activities. This book contains the results […]

In less than a decade, e-mail has exploded as the “killer app” of the Internet, transforming the way people communicate, and the way businesses operate. Guide to E-Mail Marketing offers a current review of e-mail as a marketing and communications channel to help capitalize on this dynamic and changing media platform. It also explores the […]

The goal of this publication is to educate those in the advertising community who may be unfamiliar with the specific group of applications created to help the media process run more efficiently and effectively. Guide to Media Technology provides an overview of media technology and its applications for media research; media planning; media pre-buy/buying/media stewardship/client […]

84% of recently surveyed 4A’s agencies handle social media monitoring for their clients. What metrics are they collecting, and how are the lines of responsibility drawn? This report contains the results of a survey conducted to gather high-level information about social media monitoring activities among 4A’s member agencies. The objective was to learn which agency […]

This report contains the results of a survey conducted to gather high-level information about social media monitoring activities among 4A’s member agencies. We learned that this is a growing area, but it is clearly in flux, as there is little consensus about what to measure, how to measure it, and even who should have responsibility […]

One of our most-requested Research Insights is our compilation of information on innovation and new products. We are pleased to offer an updated and enhanced version of Research Insights | Innovation & New Product Forecasts.

This year, the report is divided into two parts. In the first part we offer you our own forecasts, developed by synthesizing a tremendous amount of new research and data. We provide actionable insights into consumer behavior, filtered through the lens of various economic scenarios.

Section Two contains a distillation of the best current thinking from academics and practitioners on innovation, factors for product success and failure, consumer insights, and the role of advertising in product trial, along with marketing spending on launches, rankings of the best new products of the year, line extensions, and more.

Jewels of the Internet is a compendium of selected—and mostly free—Web resources that Research Services has compiled for 4A’s members. We believe that having a single source for these useful websites will save agencies much time and effort.

The country is now officially in a recession. The economy has slowed down. And those who make decisions about advertising, or who advise those who make decisions, may be asking many questions that have been asked in the face of earlier recessions: What to do? Cut back on advertising? Stop introducing new products? Or push […]

V123 At the 2001 AAAA Mangement Conference, Keith Reinhard, Chairman, DDB Worldwide Communications Group, Inc., gave a landmark speech on taste and decency in advertising. This video serves as a reminder to agency creatives and executive management of the Creative Code of the AAAA Standards of Practice which states in part: “…we will not knowingly […]

In early 2013, the 4A’s conducted a Truth About Advertising survey with help from IPG’s McCann Truth Central and Momentum. The findings revealed that 69% of consumers think advertising can change the world for the better. But 79% of advertising professionals said “we’re good at selling our client’s business but not our own.” Clearly advertising professionals must sell themselves and their profession better. So, we created the TruthBrief competition.
Le Communique is the winning answer. It shows how advertising is the number one place to be creative.

VOA116 Over the past several years, the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Value of Advertising Committee has engaged third-party researches to determine the value of advertising in the marketing communications mix. The purpose of these commissioned studies is to go beyond the sometimes fuzzy metrics of “marketing results” or anecdotal whether third-party research would find […]

VOA115 Over the past several years, the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Value of Advertising Committee has engaged third-party researches to determine the value of advertising in the marketing communications mix. The purpose of these commissioned studies is to go beyond the sometimes fuzzy metrics of “marketing results” or anecdotal whether third-party research would find […]

Over the past several years, the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Value of Advertising Committee has engaged third-party researches to determine the value of advertising in the marketing communications mix. The purpose of these commissioned studies is to go beyond the sometimes fuzzy metrics of “marketing results” or anecdotal whether third-party research would find proof […]

VOA112 This book is an invaluable addition to the “Value of Advertising” series because it disproves a long-held belief that advertising has a minimal effect on the base-line sales of any product. The findings in this book indicate that advertising, over a period of time, is instrumental in strengthening a brand’s position with consumers. While […]

This landmark study of the emotional response to advertising recognizes that advertising is more of an art than a science. Most of the work done in advertising research prior to this study recognized the science of advertising, but not the art.   Initiated by the late Ken Kaess, this study enlisted the aid of the […]

VOA117 Over the past several years, the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Value of Advertising Committee has engaged third-party researches to determine the value of advertising in the marketing communications mix. The purpose of these commissioned studies is to go beyond the sometimes fuzzy metrics of “marketing results” or anecdotal whether third-party research would find […]

4A’s members believe that there is an opportunity to evolve the labor billing rate process through a transparent, efficient and mutually beneficial sharing of industry labor rate information among marketers and agencies, and by providing best practice guidance related to market-based labor rates. This 4A’s 2015 Labor Billing Rate Survey Report, which covers actual hourly […]

Given how high the stakes are in the investment world, companies cannot afford to dismiss anything that can boost stock value, and new research finds that means companies must advertise. Get the tools you need to demonstrate the importance of investing in marketing in language that will resonate with C-suite and financial executives.

Utilizing numerous charts and two case studies, this book examines the relationships linking corporate brand communications; corporate image and shareholder value, and quantifies the factors contributing to corporate image. The most important factor is advertising, which weighs in at 30 percent. Consistent ad spending is thus a formidable force in adding to brand value. Other forms of communications, such as public relations, investor relations, employee relations, and social media, contribute an additional 23 percent. With many events, such as economic uncertainty, falling outside the control of a public company, it would be foolish to discount advertising, a relatively sure thing that can improve the company’s valuation.

The booklet provides perspectives on the importance of training, discusses training implementation, including developing the training curriculum, addressing core competencies, and the four types of training, and offers tips on creating a training culture in your agency.   In addition, there are appendices providing samples of agency core competencies, agency training job descriptions, a list […]