Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common. The purpose of advertising may also be to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various traditional media; including mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television commercial, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text messages.
Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding," which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate certain qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. Non-commercial advertisers who spend money to advertise items other than a consumer product or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies. Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement (PSA).
Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 2010, spending on advertising was estimated at $142.5 billion in the United States and $467 billion worldwide Internationally, the largest ("big four") advertising conglomerates are Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP.
  
Definition

1. 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. (Arens, Wei gold, Arens 2010)
2. Any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product,service, or idea from an identified sponsor. (Blech & Blech 1998)
3. Paid non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media to persuade or influence an audience. (Wells, Burnett, & Moriaty 1998)
4. The element of the marketing communication mix that is non personal paid for an identified sponsor, & disseminated through channels of mass communication to promote the adoption of goods, services, person or ideas. (Bearden, Ingram, & Laforge 1998)
5. An informative or persuasive message carried by a non personal medium & paid for by an identified sponsor whose organization or product is identified in some way. (Zikmund & D'amico 1999)
6. Impersonal; one way communication about a product or organization that is paid by a marketer. (Lamb, Hair & Mc.Daniel 2000)
7. Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas,goods or services by an identified sponsor. (Kotler et al., 2006)

The Principle of Advertisement
Advertisement is an encapsulated communication about a product (good/services), a clearly designed, concise, aesthetically appealing and content-wise accurate communiqué intended to effectively persuade the target audience(viewers/listeners/readers) to arrive at a decision as desired by the advertiser often concerning the product (goods/service). Usually the aim of an advertisement is to increase the sales of a product introduced into the market. The advertisement will speak about the salient features of the product on offer and the benefit the customer/consumer can derive out of the product. It can also educate the target audience about the various other details such as the products cost, availability, usage modalities, problems that may arise whiles using it and the probable solutions to those problems etc.
Advertisement also is used to inform a mass of audience about various socially relevant factors such as employment, upcoming events, contests or elections or a host of other such events. Now newer media of advertisements are emerging and growing. Internet based media like social networks, web portals, trade portals etc. are some of those. Marketing managers conceptualise special event simply to coercively communicate product related sales communications. Normally the advertisements are prepared in such a way that they attract the attention of the intended parties easily. Thoughtfully constructed copy (words/diction of an advertisement), interesting visual or pictures, attractive colours and designs, a uniquely arrived at theme, the central steam of thought, etc. arouse interest of the customers, and help to retain the interest. Persuasive elements of the advertisement drive the customers towards a strong desire to possess the product. This finally leads them toward buying or possessing the product. Professional managers don’t construe this as the final point in advertising. They proceed for an extra mile to ensure the initial trial becomes a success and ensures repeated clientele.
   
History

Edo period advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine call

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC. History tells us that Out-of-home advertising and billboards are the oldest forms of advertising.
                                                         
 As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers. As education became an apparent need and reading, as well as printing, developed advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 18th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became 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, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content. As the economy expanded during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. In the United States, the success of this advertising format eventually 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.

 

Advertisements of hotels in Pichilemu, Chile from 1935.

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. As time passed, many non-profit organizations followed suit in setting up their own radio stations, and included: schools, clubs and civic groups. When the practice of sponsoring programs was popularised, each individual radio program was usually sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business' name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows. However, radio station owners soon 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 carried over to commercial television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A fierce battle was fought between those seeking to commercialise the radio and people who argued that the radio spectrum should be considered a part of the commons – to be used only non-commercially and for the public good. The United Kingdom pursued a public funding model for the BBC, originally a private company, the British Broadcasting Company, but incorporated as a public body by Royal Charter in 1927. In Canada, advocates like Graham Spry were likewise able to persuade the federal government to adopt a public funding model, creating the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. However, in the United States, the capitalist model prevailed with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 which created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). However, the U.S. Congress did require commercial broadcasting companies to operate in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity". Public broadcasting now exists in the United States due to the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act which led to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). In the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network began the modern practice of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors. Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time to several businesses. This eventually became the standard for the commercial television industry in the United States. However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour. In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show—up to and including having one's advertising agency actually writing the show. The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame. In the 1960s, campaigns featuring heavy spending in different mass media channels became more prominent. For example, the Esso gasoline company spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a brand awareness campaign built around the simple and alliterative theme Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Psychologist Ernest Dichter and DDB Worldwide copywriter Sandy Sulcer learned that motorists desired both power and play while driving, and chose the tiger as an easy–to–remember symbol to communicate those feelings. The North American and later European campaign featured extensive television and radio and magazine ads, including photos with tiger tails supposedly emerging from car gas tanks, promotional events featuring real tigers, billboards, and in Europe station pump hoses "wrapped in tiger stripes" as well as pop music songs. Tiger imagery can still be seen on the pumps of successor firm ExxonMobil. 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 ShopTV 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. The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media. For example, in the US in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower—about 2.4 percent. 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.