History of Advertising
Advertising is a form
of communication which is used to persuade an audience. The non-personal communication of information usually
paid for & usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods &
services) or ideas by identified sponsor through various media is referred to
as advertising.
The history of
advertising yields back to the time of the Egyptians who used a paper like
material called as papyrus which was used for advertising. Such a method was
used for displaying wall posters and sales messages. Rock painting was commonly
practiced in Greek and Roman Empires as part of Ancient Greece and Ancient
Rome, respectively. Wall painting or wall chalking is still in practice in
dominant parts of Asia, Africa and South America. According to historical
facts, out-of-home advertising and billboards are the oldest forms of
advertising.
As civilizations
progressed, notably in the Middle East, pictorial representation was used to
publicize or indicate various professions like cobbler, carpenter, blacksmith
etc. Such pictorial representation was used because the general public was not
very literate. Another advertising medium was the use of town callers for the
carts of fruits, vegetables, ornaments and articles of trade.
With the growing need
for education, the societies resolved to learn to read and write and with vast
developments in printing facilities, handbills became another form of
advertisement. In the 18th Century, advertisements also began to
appear in English magazines. With more advances in printing press, such ads
began to become affordable and the basic objective and motive behind such
advertisements was to promote the sales of books and newspapers. Due to the
advent of various diseases in Europe, advertisements related to good medicines
also began to appear. The only problem faced at that time was the development
of fake advertisements.
In 19th
Century, the economy expanded greatly and in the United States, advertising
became a regular business and the success of such advertising formats led to
the growth of mail order advertising.
In June 1836, French newspaper La
Presse was the first to include
paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its
readership and increase its profitability and the formula
was soon copied by all titles. Around 1840, Volney
B. Palmer established the roots of the modern day advertising agency
in Philadelphia. In 1842 Palmer bought large amounts of space in various
newspapers at a discounted rate then resold the space at higher rates to
advertisers. The actual ad - the copy, layout, and artwork - was still prepared
by the company wishing to advertise; in effect, Palmer was a space broker. The
situation changed in the late 19th century when the advertising agency of N.W. Ayer
& Son was founded. Ayer and Son offered to plan, create, and execute
complete advertising campaigns for its customers. By 1900 the advertising
agency had become the focal point of creative planning, and advertising was
firmly established as a profession. Around
the same time, in France, Charles-Louis
Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first
French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement
space in newspapers. N. W.
Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility
for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in
Philadelphia.
Despite the growing economy of the world, there were few career choices
for women. But advertising was still an option. The big, renowned advertising
agencies realized this and American advertising firms utilized this format very
well and increased the magnetic pull of the consumers by introducing images and
videos of women taking part in advertisements.
Radio stations also realized that they could increase their revenue
tremendously by sponsoring their stations by allowing multiple businesses to
advertise on their frequencies and this was also a new form of good
advertising. This practice was later carried out on commercial and personal
televisions. There were specific as well as multiple advertising sponsors on
television and this way the revenue generated through advertisement increased
and so did the advertising’s goal to increase the target audience. In 1960s,
different campaigns were seen to invest heavily in mass media in advertising.
Extensive radio, newspaper, magazines and TV ads were witnessed. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type
of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than
it being a by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite
television became increasingly
prevalent, specialty channels emerged,
including channels entirely devoted
to advertising, such as QVC, Home
Shopping Network, and Shop TV
Canada. With the advent of the ad
server, marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and
contributed to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations
operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn
of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant,
unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users. This has led to
a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising.
A recent advertising innovation is "guerrilla
marketing", which involve unusual approaches
such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars
that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the
viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. Guerrilla
advertising is becoming increasing more popular with a lot of companies. This
type of advertising is unpredictable and innovative, which causes consumers to
buy the product or idea. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and
"embedded" ads, such as via product
placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social network services such as Facebook.
Going through history, one ultimately realizes that the pattern of
advertising has gone through a new dimension!
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
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