I.

Introduction

Advertising, collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services. Advertising is a form of mass selling, employed when the use of direct, person-to-person selling is impractical, impossible, or simply inefficient. It is to be distinguished from other activities intended to persuade the public, such as propaganda, publicity, and public relations. Advertising techniques range in complexity from the publishing of simple, straightforward notices in the classified advertisement columns of newspapers to the concerted use of newspapers, magazines, television, radio, the Internet, direct mail, and other communications media in the course of a single advertising campaign. From its unsophisticated beginnings in ancient times, advertising has burgeoned into a worldwide industry.

America is by far the largest user of advertising in terms of annual expenditure. In the United States alone in the late 1980s, approximately US$120 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of commodities and services. By 2003 this figure had grown to a total of over US$132 billion and accounted for 41 per cent of the global spend on advertising. The United States was followed by Japan and the United Kingdom who spent over US$31 billion and over US$19 billion/£10 billion respectively on advertising that same year. As of 2006, total advertising expenditure worldwide was predicted soon to exceed US$400 billion.

Modern advertising is an integral segment of urban industrial civilization, mirroring contemporary life in its best and worst aspects. Having proven its force in the movement of economic goods and services, advertising since the early 1960s has been directed increasingly towards matters of social concern. Health awareness and anti-drink-driving campaigns are two examples of the use of the advertising industry as a means to promote public welfare.

Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising, directed at the ultimate purchaser, and trade advertising, in which the appeal is made to dealers through trade journals and other media.

Both consumer and trade advertising employ many specialized types of commercial persuasion. A relatively minor, but important, form of advertising is institutional (or corporate) advertising, which is designed solely to build prestige and public respect for particular business concerns. Each year vast sums are spent on institutional advertising, which usually mentions products or services for sale only incidentally.

Another minor, but increasingly popular, form of advertising is cooperative advertising, in which the manufacturer shares the expense of local radio or newspaper advertising with the retailer who signs the advertisement. National advertisers occasionally share the same space in magazine advertising.

Advertising may be local, national, or international in scope. The rates charged for the three different levels of advertising vary sharply, particularly in newspapers; varying rates are set for differing classifications of advertising. At one end of the scale are display advertisements for expensive consumer items such as cars. At the other is classified advertising, which ranges from appointments and property advertising at the top, to relatively inexpensive charitable and religious advertisements at the bottom.