History time...
Archaeologists have found evidence of advertising dating back to the 3000s BC, with eye-catching signs painted on the walls of buildings, notably in the ruins of ancient Rome and Pompeii (including an advert alerting travellers to a tavern situated in another town). Egyptians are known to have used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters, while lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
Some people think of word-of-mouth advertising as a relatively modern phenomenon however it was next big thing in advertising back in medieval times where town criers read public notices aloud and were also employed by merchants to shout the praises of their wares.
Printed advertising made little headway until the invention of the movable-type printing press in the mid 15th century. This invention made the mass distribution of posters and circulars possible with the first advertisement in English appeared in 1472 in the form of a handbill announcing a prayer book for sale.
Read all abaaad it
Advertising as a discrete form is generally agreed to have emerged in the 17th century when the first newspapers were launched including line or classified advertising. The first newspaper ad published offered a reward for the return of 12 stolen horses.
These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which were increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false advertising and so called "quack" advertisements became a problem, triggering the earliest regulation of advertising content.
In the latter part of the 19th century, advertising started its journey to become an industry in its own right. Technological advances meant that illustrations could be added to the early crude text-based advertising, and colour was also now an option.
Advertising sells
In the United States, the advertising profession is said to have begun in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1841 when Volney B. Palmer set up shop as an advertising agent, the forerunner of the advertising agency. He contracted with newspapers for large amounts of advertising space at discount rates and then resold the space to advertisers at a higher rate. The ads themselves were created by the advertisers.
In 1869, Francis Ayer bought out Palmer and founded N. W. Ayer & Son, an agency that still exists today. Ayer transformed the standard agent practice by billing advertisers exactly what he paid to publishers plus an agreed upon commission. Soon he was not only selling space but was also conducting market research and writing the advertising copy. This paved the way for the first modern advertising agencies with a new emphasis on creativity, a direct response to an increasingly crowded marketplace, where manufacturers were realising that promotion of their products was vital if they were to survive. The new ad agencies sold themselves as experts in communication allowing their clients to get on with their core competence - manufacturing.
It's not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on.
At the beginning of the 20th century, new forms of mass media gave advertisers a wider audience and greater room for creativity - using cinema, and to a much greater extent, radio, to transmit commercial messages. By the end of the 1920s, advertisers were producing many of their own radio programs – dramatic series known as soap operas because they were sponsored by soap companies!
World War I then saw important advances in the power of advertising as governments on all sides used ads as propaganda.
Calm down dear, it's only a commercial
The 1950s brought post-war affluence to the average citizen and manufacturing advances created a whole new glut of material goods for which need had to be generated - not least the television. The modern-day consumer was born. In America, TV ownership spread like wildfire and where TV sets went, advertisers followed. Commercial TV stations with sponsored programming proliferated but standards weren’t tight, advertisers gained too tight a control over content resulting in a number of high profile scandals where sponsors interfered in the outcome of quiz shows.
Radio station owners had already realised they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio station's broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single businesses per show. This practice was then carried over to television and became known as the magazine concept, or participation advertising, as it allowed a whole variety of advertisers to access the audience of a single TV show. The 'commercial break' as we know it was born.
The tone of the advertising was also changing. No longer did advertising simply present the product benefit. Instead it began to create a product image. The introduction of the TV remote control and access to hundreds of cable channels meant that advertising must interest and entertain consumers or else they will simply use the remote to change the channel.
I want my MTV
The late 1980s saw the introduction of MTV (music television). 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.
Dub dub dub...
With the advent of the Internet in the early 1990s, advertising finally got its truly global, non-time-specific medium. The World Wide Web provides 24/7 access to promotional material for interested audience, and as such, gave a new boost to advertising as an industry.
In 2006, Bill Gates gave an address to the inaugural conference of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and made the claim that "the future of advertising is the internet". The claim coincided with the IAB's prediction that online advertising was worth £1bn a year in the UK and had outstripped the markets for both radio and billboards… and as he confidently predicted way back in 1996, virtually all print ads you see nowadays contain a URL where consumers can find out more.
Entire corporations now operate solely on advertising revenue, at the turn of this 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.
For a limited time only...
Back to broadcast, new digital devices now make it possible to edit out commercials. On demand services enable consumers to determine not only when they watch something, but also, to a greater extent than ever before, what they will watch. As consumers gain greater control over their viewing activities, they will find it easier to avoid advertising. To counter this effect, many advertisers are opting for product placement on TV shows or whole new approaches to attract attention.
A recent innovation is "guerrilla promotions", 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. 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 networking sites (e.g. MySpace).
No one can predict what new forms advertising may take in the future, but the rapidly increasing cost of acquiring new customers makes one thing certain: advertisers will seek to hold onto current customers by forming closer relationships with them and by tailoring products, services, and advertising messages to meet their individual needs.
So while advertising will continue to encourage people to consume, it will also help provide them with products and services more likely to satisfy their needs.
"Advertising Is Dead, Long Live..."
You may have heard reports of a decline in advertising revenues across certain media - print in particular. Whilst it is certainly true that new emerging forms of media are capturing advertising spend from 'old' media in some situations, the industry is not in terminal decline.
We are a capitalist society and, give or take peaks and troughs in the economic cycle, people will still want to buy stuff and brands will still want to promote their particular type of stuff as the best stuff to buy!
The "advertising is dead" bandwagon is making lots of money for a fair few marketing consultants and soothsayers out there: consumers, and youth in particular (the most important consumers of all), are becoming increasingly media-aware, jaded by traditional advertising and cynical of many conventional branding and marketing efforts.
We agree times are a-changing: developments in technology are opening up new advertising vehicles almost daily - social media platforms, the rise of "citizen journalism"... we believe advertising is alive and well, it just needs to stay clever and continue to take on new formats... check out the links in our Lunchtime Fodder and Blog Heaven sections for further reading...
CREDITS
"Advertising," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
© 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
“MEDIAKNOWALL” http://www.mediaknowall.com © Karina Wilson 2000-2005
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Advertising”
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