Advertisers take us for Spend-


ADVERTISING a collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific products 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 notices in the classified-advertising columns of newspapers to integrated marketing communications, involving the concerted use of advertising in newspapers, magazines, television, and radio, as well as direct response, sales promotion, and other communications vehicles in the course of a single campaign. From its unsophisticated beginnings in ancient times, advertising has flourished into a worldwide industry. In the U.S. alone in the early 1990s, about $138 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of products and services.



Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising, directed to the ultimate purchaser, and trade (or business-to-business) advertising, in which the appeal is made to business users through trade journals and other media.



Both consumer and trade advertising employ many specialised types of commercial persuasion. A relatively minor, but important, form of advertising is institutional (or image) advertising, designed solely to build prestige and public respect for particular items. Each year millions are spent on institutional advertising, which usually mentions products or services only incidentally. Another minor, but increasingly popular, form of advertising is co-operative advertising, in which the manufacturer shares the expense of local television, radio, or newspaper advertising with the retailer who signs the advertisement. National advertisers occasionally share the same space in magazine advertising. For example, makers of pancake flour, of syrup, and of sausages sometimes jointly advertise this combination as an ideal cold-weather breakfast.



Advertising may be local, regional, national, or international in scope. The rates charged for the different levels of advertising vary sharply, particularly in newspapers; varying rates also are set by newspapers for amusement, political, legal, religious, and charitable advertisements.



Advertising messages are disseminated through numerous and varied channels or media. In descending order of volume, the major media are newspapers, television, direct mail, radio, magazines, business publications, outdoor advertising, and farm publications. In addition, a significant amount of all advertising is invested in miscellaneous media, such as window displays, free shopping-news publications, calendars, blimps, sky writing by aeroplanes, and even sandwich boards carried by people walking the streets.



A wide range of advertising media has been developed from sources whose potential importance formerly was ignored. Delivery trucks, once plainly painted, now often carry institutional or product messages, as do many shipping cartons. Some packages carry advertising for products other than those contained in them. Wrapping paper and shopping bags bearing advertisements are used widely by retail stores.



Direct advertising includes all forms of sales appeals mailed, delivered, or exhibited directly to the prospective buyer of an advertised product or service, without use of any indirect medium, such as newspapers or television. Direct advertising logically may be divided into three broad classifications, namely, direct mail, mail order, and un-mailed advertising.



All forms of sales appeals (except mail-order appeals) that are sent through the mails are considered direct-mail advertising. The chief function of direct-mail advertising is to familiarise prospective buyers with a product's name, its maker, its merits, and its local distributors. A direct-mail appeal is designed to support the sales activities of retailers by encouraging the continued patronage of old and new customers.


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