Cross-Platform Advertising

                             Cross-Platform Advertising-

Intro-

Within this essay i will be exploring cross-platform advertising and its history, effects across society: I will be referring to different uses of cross platform advertising through media such as the television or social media ( Twitter and snap-chat ) and how its based around society today. Furthermore i will be analyzing popular sources of cross-platform advertising which would be social media as this generation is interested in technology some examples would be snap-chat, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Cross-platform, also known as cross-media, is a reference to the state of your advertising spanning multiple media types, e.g. TV, mobile and paid search.

I say "reference" because the phrase out of context doesn't have useful meaning. Anyone with a decent budget advertises across multiple platforms/media types. When you hear "cross-platform", you're usually hearing it as a reference to the measurement being conducted on such advertising, in an effort to attribute one result (say, a sale) back to your holistic advertising efforts. Traditionally, the sale would have been attributed to the ad that generated it (for instance, a paid search click that drove the site visit that resulted in the sale); the contributing impact of your TV ad and mobile video to that sale was unknown and could not be easily measured with the same currency as the paid search ad. Cross-platform measurement attempts to provide insight into how your TV campaign or your mobile video spot also contributed to the sale, and more importantly, how you can utilize that knowledge for your next campaign. Much of this is fueled by the digitization of all media, as it was not a practical concept thirty or forty years ago.

P.S.: the phrase "cross-device" is sometimes used in place of "cross-platform" or "cross-media". One could define these terms however they please, but as of today, cross-device typically refers to the aforementioned measurement across digital devices only, e.g. tablet, phone, laptop. The logic is the same, but the scope is smaller and (currently) easier to execute because the media devices all fall under the digital platform.

Platform Integration & limitations: Each platform has its own unique style and affords certain flexibility missing in others. This may put you at a disadvantage because you may not be able to leverage the unique functionality and tools of the respective native platform when developing an app for multiple platforms.