Advertising (redirected from Textual ads)

advertising, in general, any openly sponsored offering of goods, services, or ideas through any medium of public communication. At its inception advertising was merely an announcement; for example, entrepreneurs in ancient Egypt used criers to announce ship and cargo arrivals. The invention of printing, however, may be said to have ushered in modern advertising. After the influence of salesmanship began to insert itself into public notice in the 18th cent., the present elaborate form of advertising began to evolve. The advertising agency, working on a commission basis, has been chiefly responsible for this evolution. The largest group of advertisers are the food marketers, followed by marketers of drugs and cosmetics, soaps, automobiles, tobacco, appliances, and oil products. The major U.S. advertising media are newspapers, magazines, television and radio, business publications, billboards, and circulars sent through the mail. With the advent of the wide availability of electronic mail and access to the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the Internet has also become an important advertising venue. Since many large advertising agencies were once located on Madison Avenue in New York City, the term "Madison Avenue" is frequently used to symbolize the advertising business. The major criticisms of advertising are that it creates false values and impels people to buy things they neither need nor want and that, in fact, may be actually harmful (such as cigarettes). In reply, its defenders say that advertising is meant to sell products, not create values; that it can create a new market for products that fill a genuine, though latent, need; and that it furthers product improvement through free competition. The Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, both founded in 1917, are the major associations.

Bibliography

See M. Mayer, Madison Avenue, U.S.A. (1958); R. Glatzer, The New Advertising (1970); R. Hovland and G. Wilcox, ed., Advertising in Society (1988); W. Wells et al., Advertising: Principles & Practice (4th ed. 1998); J. B. Twitchell, Adcult, USA (1995) and 20 Ads That Shook the World: The Century's Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How It Changed Us All (2000).

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advertising

Techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way. Weekly newspapers in London first carried advertisements in the 17th century; by the 18th century such advertising was flourishing. The first advertising agencies were established in the 19th century to broker for space in newspapers, and by the early 20th century agencies were producing the advertising message itself, including copy and artwork. Most advertising promotes goods for sale, but similar methods are used in public service messages to promote causes, charities, or political candidates. In many countries, advertising is the most important source of income for the media through which it is conducted. In addition to newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media, advertising media include direct mail (see direct-mail marketing), billboards and posters, transit advertising, the Internet, and promotional items such as matchbooks or calendars. Advertisers attempt to choose media that are favoured by the advertisers' target audience. See also marketing; merchandising.

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Advertising 

(in Russian, reklama). (1) Information about the consumer qualities of commodities and various types of services, disseminated for the purpose of selling the commodities and services by creating a demand.

(2) The dissemination of information about a person, organization or work of literature or art in order to create popularity. Corresponding to the Russian word reklama are the English terms “advertising” and “publicity,” the French term publicité, and the German term Werbung.

The simplest forms of advertising existed even before the Common Era. In ancient Greece and Rome, advertising notices were written on wooden boards, engraved on copper or bone, and loudly read in squares and other public places. Advertising achieved its greatest development in the era of capitalism. The origin of printed advertising in the early 17th century is associated with W. Caxton in England and T. Renaudot in France.

Modern advertising is done through the print media (newspapers, magazines, posters, bulletins, prospectuses), radio, television, films, store windows, signs (including those composed of lights), packaging, commodity and company insignia, and by other means. In the industrially developed countries, newspaper and magazine advertising accounts for 40 percent of total advertising expenditures, with the next most popular media being television and radio, in that order.

Advertising art is synthetic in character. Advertising makes wide use of commercial art, poster art, decorative designing art, and environmental furnishings.

The development of advertising in capitalist countries was occasioned by the struggle for markets and the struggle to obtain maximum profits. Advertising is a method of nonprice competition and is one of the functions of marketing. Apart from having purely economic objectives, it is used to shape the public politically and ideologically. Advertising, which molds the needs and living standard of bourgeois society, is a social weapon of the exploiting class. The advertising media, which are in the hands of monopolies, help impose superfluous needs, inculcate conformist views, and implant standards of “mass culture” and worship of fashion. Through the system of mass media, advertising encompasses the overwhelming majority of members of the “consumer society” and contributes to the increasing alienation of the individual. It has become a powerful means of ideologically influencing the population during election campaigns and other campaigns, foisting on the public political figures who suit the monopolies. Advertising is widely used to propagandize bourgeois ideology and the Western, especially American, way of life.

Advertising is handled by special firms and agencies with a far-flung network of departments and offices and the advertising departments of industrial and commercial companies, publishing houses, and so forth. Revenues from advertisements make up a significant share of the profits of bourgeois periodicals, radio companies, and television companies.

It is estimated that every inhabitant of the USA is subjected daily to a stream of approximately 1,500 advertisements. In 1970, the ten largest agencies, which include J. Walter Thompson Co., McCann-Erickson, Inc., Young & Rubicam Inc., and Ogilvy & Mather Inc., accounted for almost 30 percent of the volume of US advertising. In 1966, Japan had more than 300 advertising agencies, employing some 30,000 employees in all; Dentsu, one of the world’s largest agencies, accounted for a quarter of all moneys spent in the country on advertising. Advertising expenditures, which are included in distribution costs, have reached gigantic dimensions, totaling $22.1 billion in the USA in 1972. Advertising costs are passed on to the consumer through monopoly prices, with up to 50 percent of the price of certain new goods on the market due to advertising expenditures.

In socialist countries, advertising is done on a planned basis and is distinguished by truthfulness. It stimulates demand and promotes the formation of new social needs, a rise in the standard of consumption, and the development of the socialist economy and culture.

Among the first decrees of the Soviet state was a decree on the introduction of a state monopoly on advertisements. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, advertising promoted the development of trade between the city and countryside and the strengthening of contacts between trade and industry. Specialized advertising organizations were formed, including Promreklama (the industrial advertising agency of the Supreme Council on the National Economy) and Mostorgreklama (the Moscow commercial advertising bureau for trade advertising). Subsequently advances were made in the organization and techniques of advertising.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, a number of large specialized advertising organizations were created, including Soiuztorgreklama (All-Union Trade Advertising Agency), Rostorgreklama (Russian Trade Advertising Agency), and Glavkooptorgreklama (Chief Cooperative Trade Advertising Agency). A number of industrial advertising bureaus were created under various ministries and departments. Interdepartmental councils on advertising were organized to coordinate advertising activities.

More than 60 specialized advertising publications are issued in the USSR, including Reklama (Advertising), Kommercheskii vestnik (Commercial Herald), Moskovskaia reklama (Moscow Advertising), Novye tovary (New Commodities), Panorama (Panorama), and supplements to oblast and republic newspapers. As of 1974 there were more than 400 advertising films, and radio and television advertising programs are broadcast daily. Fairs for the sale of advertising equipment are held every year in Moscow.

Advertising is also developing well in other socialist countries. There are specialized advertising organizations in the German Democratic Republic (DEWAG Werbung, an agency that fills orders for all types of advertising), Czechoslovakia (Merkur, Optima and others), Bulgaria (Reklama), and Hungary (Magyar Hirdetö). Specialized advertising publications include Neue Werbung in the German Democratic Republic, Reklama in Czechoslovakia, Kirakat in Hungary, Reklama in Poland, and Reklama in Bulgaria. Representatives of the advertising organizations of the member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) regularly exchange news of achievements in the theory and practice of advertising.

REFERENCES

Voronov, K. G. “Reklama v torgovle kapitalisticheskikh stran.” In the collection Nauchnye zapiski Vsesoiuznoi akademii vneshnei torgovli, issue 13. Moscow, 1967.
Degtiarev, Iu. A., and L. A. Kornilov. Torgovaia reklama: ekonomika, iskusstvo. Moscow, 1969.
Feofanov, O. A. SShA: reklama i obshchestvo. Moscow, 1974.
Reeves, R. Realizm v reklame. Moscow, 1969. (Translated from English.)
Spravochnik po torgovoi reklame. Moscow, 1972. (Translated from German.)
Sovetskii reklamnyi plakat, 1917–1932: Torgovaia reklama, zrelishchnaia reklama. [Album.] Moscow, 1972.
Mayer, M. Madison Avenue, U.S.A. New York, 1958.
Packard, V. The Hidden Persuaders. New York, 1961.
Boorstin, D. J. The Decline of Radicalism: Reflections of America Today. New York, 1969.
McLuhan, M. Culture Is Our Business. New York, 1972.

E. M. KANEVSKII