Peer Review

Public Service Advertising - Media Facts

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Overview:: This website provides statistics, data and long-term trends compiled by the mass media industry, a glossary of PSA related terms and links to media associations and websites.
Type of Material:: Reference Material
Recommended Uses:: - The media resources could be used as outside reading material as well as background research that might form the basis of making plans for advertising, marketing, or integrated marketing communications. - Can learn terminology of various media and their respective markets.
Technical Requirements:: Web browser.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: - To gain a deeper understanding about traditional forms of media including tv, radio, print, and outdoor. - Within each form of media, to understand some of the major organizations involved, the terminology, quick facts, and top outlets. - To have a reference source for statistics and data for Public Service Advertising.
Target Student Population:: Undergraduate students in an advertising or IMC course.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Basic marketing and and understanding/knowledge of public service advertising.

Rating:
Strengths:: - The site is very inclusive and provides readings, data, reports, statistics, as well as glossaries for various media. - The PSA Bibliography and the FAQ contain a wide variety of resources about many aspects of PSA creation, distribution and evaluation.
Concerns:: - There are no learning objectives, - The site is not designed to be interactive. - The content is quite dated in some important areas. For example, print media page lists the top 50 newspapers, but the ranking took place in 2010.

Rating:
Strengths:: - The breadth of content coverage provides a good amount of resource materials. - Some of this information could be difficult to aggregate by an individual, and thus having this in one location provides an opportunity for instructors to develop assignments and/or discussion points using the materials. - The module has a lot of interesting reading material about traditional forms of media (tv, radio, print, and outdoor).
Concerns:: - The site itself is very simply in design, and not interactive. - Instructors will need to provide support and background information on how they wish students to use it. - While deep in content on traditional media, the module does not include some of the emergent forms of media, such as paid search, social media advertising, video marketing, etc. - The dated nature of some of the materials would be a concern to instructors looking for state-of-the art information about traditional media.

Rating:
Strengths:: - The site design is easy to use. - Links are functional. - The Public Services Media Facts part of the site is not terribly large so it is fairly easy to navigate. - All content is organized around four major themes: TV, Radio, Print and Outdoor. - When clicking links to external sites, the frame with the four themes remain, so fortunately the user is not leaving the site completely.
Concerns:: - Beside the four major themes, which are accessible from the left side of every one of the media pages, there is not an internal navigational system. - The site uses frames, which is a relatively old technology. A problem with frames is that the URL does not change as someone is navigating from one page to the next. Unless users understand how to copy/paste a URL within a main part of a frame, it makes sharing the URL difficult. - Speaking of sharing, there are not social media icons to allow sharing of the content in other platforms. The Public Service Media Facts is part of a larger site that appears to be undergoing some construction. - On the home page, the Public Service Advertising Research Center indicates that they are in the process of completely overhauling site broadening its scope, adding new content and creating a much more contemporary design. Perhaps these issues will be resolved in time.

Other Issues and Comments:: The link to "Home" takes individuals to the PSA Research Center, where instructors will find additional sources, including case studies, a FAQ, and social marketing resources.
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