Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Media

Digital media simply refers to any communication media which work with the employment of some any of the various encoded machine readable data formats. Digital media is designed so as to be easily manipulated, viewed, modified, and maintained on a computer. It is very flexible in nature and is a lot more dynamic in nature than traditional media like prints, photographs, or paintings. The main difference between digital and traditional media is that traditional media are fixed in nature while digital media are constantly changing and becoming more flexible and user-friendly. Some of the most common characteristics and functions of digital media include:

Flexibility Digital media provides an unprecedented opportunity for businesses and marketers to reach their target audiences. Unlike traditional media, digital media allows marketers and business to display multimedia contents in unique ways to target specific audiences. This makes digital age quite flexible in terms of target audience because they can easily change the media and content in order to reach an even wider range of audience.

High Quality Print Media In today’s technologically advanced scenario, the demand for high quality print media is increasing day by day. As a result, the competition for business is increasing at an unprecedented rate and marketers are finding it tough to stay ahead of the game. Businesses can also gain huge benefits by opting for digital media. It is comparatively cheaper and more flexible than print media. Moreover, digital media also provides the user with an immense number of opportunities for custom designing.

Flexibility Digital content is widely used by users across the globe. In case of social media sites, the content available can only be viewed by members of the site. In case of traditional media like the print media, it can be viewed by the people who own the print media houses or by any individual who may have subscribed to that magazine or newspaper. However, there is no restriction on viewing the content on the internet as the social media sites do not restrict the viewers or subscribers to access the content.

Advantages of Digital Media Over Traditional Mass Media The advantages of digital media over traditional mass media are very many. The print media cannot be sold over the internet as there is no place for such advertising. However, the digital content is available for all to see and so there are very fewer chances of people not being able to view the content. Digital mass media like videos and photographs are available for viewing online and hence there is very less chance of people not being able to watch or access them.

Social Media – The introduction of social media has completely changed the face of advertising. This has changed the concept of advertising as now people are more aware about how they use the media and the kind of response they get. Therefore, there is no scope of advertising on traditional media anymore. However, as digital media is new media for advertising, people are still using the traditional methods to market their products.