Lesson 3: How Advertising Gets to the Media Simulation

(2 Days � first to learn and once after fieldtrip for review)

 

Standards:

NCSS Individuals, Groups and Institutions

• help learners to understand the various forms institutions take, their functions, their relationships to one another and how they develop and change over time

 

 

Objectives:

• Students will understand the concept of a target audience.
• Students will understand the basic roles that a producer, network manager and advertiser plays in the process of getting advertisements onto tv.
• Students will understand that advertisers pay money to make sure that their ad is seen by lots of people in their target audience.

 

Materials:

• Graph from math class
• before this lesson, create a graph in math from the data they collected on their homework from the first lesson by charting the times they watched tv and the number/type of ads they saw at that time

 

• Four products aimed at different age/demographic groups
• Visuals of producer, network, advertisers
• Video tape as producer prop
• hat with antennae on it for network manager
• advertisement on another videotape as advertiser prop and fake money

 

Procedures:

Opening- Now know a little more about advertising we are going to find out how these ads make it onto tv, radio and into magazines.� Remember how we talked a little about target audience?� That means that people are trying to sell a product to a certain group of people.� I am going to hold up an item and you have to determine who advertisers will try to sell the product to, who is their target audience?�

Hold up item and have kids stand up if it is for�, stand up if you think advertisers are trying to sell this product to�.

o   diapers (sell to babies or to parents?)

o   toys (sell to kids or adults?)

o   cleaning products (kids or adults?)

o   Trix or Frosted Flake cereal (kids or adults)

 

Now that we know that advertisers have to decide who to make their ads for we are going to look at how they know when and where to put their ads so that their target audience sees them.

*We�re going to talk about tv today but a lot of what we are going to see is the same as how magazines, radios and computers sell ads too.

 

(Put up a picture of a producer) Producers are people that make programs or shows you watch.� What are some shows you can think of?� Write down list of shows under the picture of the producer.

Producers sell their shows to television networks� that are in charge of what shows go on different channels.� What are some tv channels that you can think of?� (Name Disney channel or ABC�.write down what the students come up with under the picture of the network)

These networks sell time in between the shows you watch to advertisers (put up a pic of an advertiser).� Can you remind me of some of the products advertisers try to sell?� Advertisers pay for time in between shows to show their ads to try to sell their products to the viewers of these particular shows.

�

Now I need three volunteers to help me with this.�

First student is a producer, hand them a videotape and explain that they just made a show- what is their favorite show on tv?� They just made that show and it is a HIT!�

Now they are going to hand the video/show to the next student who is a manager of a network (this student wears a hat with an antennae to demonstrate that they are part of a tv station).� This manager gets to look at the graph we made in math class and decide what time the most kids watch tv.� Since this is such a popular show they want to make sure that it is on when lots of kids are watching.�

Once they decide which time they want their show at they go over to the last student who is an advertiser.� You know how shows play for 10 minutes or so before they go to the commercial breaks, well those commercials are ads.� They try to sell us something.� The advertiser will have an ad (video tape with a picture of an ad on it) ready for one of the products held up earlier in the lesson.� The advertiser now has to decide if he wants to pay more fake money to put his ad on tv when lots of kids are watching or if he wants to pay less of his fake money to put his ad on at a time when not as many kids watch tv.�

 

 

Explain that this is how advertising works for tv, advertisers pay money to television stations/networks to put their ads on tv but they decide if they want to pay more money for times when lots of kids watch tv, or less money when not as many kids watch.�

Thumbs up if you think you understand how this works, thumbs down if you do not.

*If students seem confused assure them that we will be talking a little about this on our fieldtrip to a tv station the next day and will do this again when we get back and have had the opportunity to talk to the tv station manager about how this works.�

 

• Go on fieldtrip to television station/network to learn about what happens there and how advertising works then review this lesson.

 

Assessments:

Informal-

Teacher observation of students standing up for correct target audience during the first part of the activity.

Student self-assessment using thumbs up/down on comprehension of topic.