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Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are wide range of uses, the most common being the commercial advertisement.
Commercial advertisements often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding", which associates a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers. On the other hand, ads that intend to elicit an immediate sale are known as direct-response advertising. Non-commercial entities that advertise more than consumer products or services include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies. Non-profit organizations may use free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement. Advertising may also help to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful.
In the 19th century,
soap
Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...
businesses were among the first to employ large-scale advertising campaigns.
Thomas J. Barratt was hired by
Pears
Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the family Rosaceae, bearing the po ...
to be its brand manager—the first of its kind—and in addition to creating slogans and images he recruited West End stage actress and socialite
Lillie Langtry
Emilie Charlotte, Lady de Bathe (née Le Breton, formerly Langtry; 13 October 1853 – 12 February 1929), known as Lillie (or Lily) Langtry and nicknamed "The Jersey Lily", was a British socialite, stage actress and producer.
Born on the isla ...
to become the poster-girl for Pears, making her the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product.
[ Modern advertising originated with the techniques introduced with ]tobacco advertising
Nicotine marketing is the marketing of nicotine-containing products or use. Traditionally, the tobacco industry markets cigarette smoking, but it is increasingly marketing other products, such as electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco product ...
in the 1920s, most significantly with the campaigns of Edward Bernays
Edward Louis Bernays ( , ; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". His best-known ca ...
, considered the founder of modern, " Madison Avenue" advertising.[Donley T. Studlar (2002]
''Tobacco Control: Comparative Politics in the United States and Canada''
p.55 quotation: "... from the early days advertising has been intimately intertwined with tobacco. The man who is sometimes considered the founder of modern advertising and Madison Avenue, Edward Bernays, created many of the major cigarette campaigns of the 1920s, including having women march down the street demanding the right to smoke."[Donald G. Gifford (2010]
''Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries''
, p.15 quotation: "... during the early twentieth century, tobacco manufacturers virtually created the modern advertising and marketing industry as it is known today."
Worldwide spending on advertising in 2015 amounted to an estimated . Advertising's projected distribution for 2017 was 40.4% on TV, 33.3% on digital, 9% on newspapers, 6.9% on magazines, 5.8% on outdoor and 4.3% on radio. Internationally, the largest ("Big Five") advertising agency
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
groups are Omnicom
Omnicom Group Inc. is an American global media, marketing and corporate communications holding company, headquartered in New York City.
Omnicom's branded networks and specialty firms provide services in four disciplines: advertising, customer re ...
, WPP, Publicis
Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. One of the oldest and largest marketing and communications companies in the world by revenue, it is headquartered in Paris.
After 1945, the little-known Paris ...
, Interpublic
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG) is an American publicly traded advertising company. The company consists of five major networks: FCB, IPG Mediabrands, McCann Worldgroup, MullenLowe Group, and Marketing Specialists, as well as a ...
, and Dentsu
Dentsu Inc. ( ja, 株式会社電通 ''Kabushiki-gaisha Dentsū'' or 電通 ''Dentsū'' for short) is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is currently the largest advertis ...
.
In Latin, ''advertere'' means "to turn towards".
History
Egyptians used papyrus
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...
to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...
. Lost and found
A lost and found (American English) or lost property (British English), or lost articles (also Canadian English) is an office in a public building or area where people can go to retrieve lost articles that may have been found by others. Frequen ...
advertising on papyrus was common in ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...
and ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
. 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.[Bhatia (2000). ''Advertising in Rural India: Language, Marketing Communication, and Consumerism'', 62+68]
In ancient China, the earliest advertising known was oral, as recorded in the Classic of Poetry
The ''Classic of Poetry'', also ''Shijing'' or ''Shih-ching'', translated variously as the ''Book of Songs'', ''Book of Odes'', or simply known as the ''Odes'' or ''Poetry'' (; ''Shī''), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, c ...
(11th to 7th centuries BC) of bamboo flutes played to sell confectionery. Advertisement usually takes in the form of calligraphic signboards and inked papers. A copper printing plate dated back to the Song dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
used to print posters in the form of a square sheet of paper with a rabbit logo with " Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop" and "We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine-quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time" written above and below is considered the world's earliest identified printed advertising medium.
In Europe, as the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general population was unable to read, instead of signs that read "cobbler", "miller", "tailor", or "blacksmith", images associated with their trade would be used such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horseshoe, 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 crier
A town crier, also called a bellman, is an officer of a royal court or public authority who makes public pronouncements as required.
Duties and functions
The town crier was used to make public announcements in the streets. Criers often dress ...
s) to announce their whereabouts. The first compilation of such advertisements was gathered in "Les Crieries de Paris", a thirteenth-century poem by Guillaume de la Villeneuve.
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. However, false advertising and so-called "quack
Quack, The Quack or Quacks may refer to:
People
* Quack Davis, American baseball player
* Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack (1834–1917), Dutch economist and historian
* Joachim Friedrich Quack (born 1966), German Egyptologist
* Johannes Quack (b ...
" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content.
19th century
Thomas J. Barratt of London has been called "the father of modern advertising".[Matt Haig, ''Brand failures: the truth about the 100 biggest branding mistakes of all time'', Kogan Page Publishers, 2005, pp. 219, 266.][Nicholas Mirzoeff, ''The visual culture reader'', Routledge, 2002, p. 510.] Working for the Pears soap
Pears transparent soap is a British brand of soap first produced and sold in 1807 by Andrew Pears, at a factory just off Oxford Street in London. It was the world's first mass-market translucent soap. Under the stewardship of advertising pionee ...
company, Barratt created an effective advertising campaign for the company products, which involved the use of targeted slogans, images and phrases. One of his slogans, "Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century.[Eric Partridge, Paul Beale, ''A Dictionary of Catch Phrases: British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day'', Routledge, 1986, p.164.] In 1882, Barratt recruited English actress and socialite Lillie Langtry
Emilie Charlotte, Lady de Bathe (née Le Breton, formerly Langtry; 13 October 1853 – 12 February 1929), known as Lillie (or Lily) Langtry and nicknamed "The Jersey Lily", was a British socialite, stage actress and producer.
Born on the isla ...
to become the poster-girl for Pears, making her the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product.
Becoming the company's brand manager in 1865, listed as the first of its kind by the '' Guinness Book of Records'', Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful advertising and these were widely circulated in his day. He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product's availability through saturation campaigns. He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them. An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present taste."
Enhanced advertising revenues was one effect of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Thanks to the revolution and the consumers it created, by the mid-19th century biscuits and chocolate
Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civ ...
became products for the masses, and British biscuit manufacturers were among the first to introduce branding to distinguish grocery products. One the world's first global brands, Huntley & Palmers biscuits were sold in 172 countries in 1900, and their global reach was reflected in their advertisements.
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
In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs.
It i ...
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 when the first full-service advertising agency of N.W. Ayer & Son was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia. Ayer & 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
Charles-Louis Havas (5 July 1783 – 21 May 1858) was a French writer, translator, and founder of the first news agency Agence Havas (whose descendants are the Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the advertising firm Havas).
Biography
Havas was bor ...
extended the services of his news agency, Havas
Havas SA is a French multinational advertising and public relations company, headquartered in Paris, France. It operates in more than 100 countries and is one of the largest advertising and communications groups in the world. Havas consists of ...
to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers.
20th century
As a result of massive industrialization, advertising increased dramatically in the United States. In 1919 it was 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, and it averaged 2.2 percent of GDP between then and at least 2007, though it may have declined dramatically since the Great Recession.
Industry could not benefit from its increased productivity without a substantial increase in consumer spending. This contributed to the development of mass marketing designed to influence the population's economic behavior on a larger scale. In the 1910s and 1920s, advertisers in the U.S. adopted the doctrine that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – " sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities. Edward Bernays
Edward Louis Bernays ( , ; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". His best-known ca ...
, a nephew of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
, became associated with the method and is sometimes called the founder of modern advertising and public relations. Bernays claimed that:In other words, selling products by appealing to the rational minds of customers (the main method used prior to Bernays) was much less effective than selling products based on the unconscious desires that Bernays felt were the true motivators of human action. " Sex sells" became a controversial issue, with techniques for titillating and enlarging the audience posing a challenge to conventional morality.
In the 1920s, under Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
, the American government promoted advertising. Hoover himself delivered an address to the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World in 1925 called 'Advertising Is a Vital Force in Our National Life." In October 1929, the head of the U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce
:
The International Trade Administration (ITA) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that promotes United States exports of nonagricultural U.S. services and goods.
Duties
The ITA's stated goals are to
# Provide practical info ...
, Julius Klein, stated "Advertising is the key to world prosperity." This was part of the "unparalleled" collaboration between business and government in the 1920s, according to a 1933 European economic journal.
The tobacco companies became major advertisers in order to sell packaged cigarettes.[Brandt (2009]
p.31
The tobacco companies pioneered the new advertising techniques when they hired Bernays to create positive associations with tobacco smoking.
Advertising was also used as a vehicle for cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural ass ...
, encouraging workers to exchange their traditional habits and community structure in favor of a shared "modern" lifestyle. An important tool for influencing immigrant workers was the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers
The American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers was founded by Louis Nicholas Hammerling in 1908. It served as an intermediary between "respectable national advertisers", and the foreign-language newspapers that profited from publishing adv ...
(AAFLN). The AAFLN was primarily an advertising agency but also gained heavily centralized control over much of the immigrant press.
At the turn of the 20th century, advertising was one of the few career choices for women. Since women were responsible for most household purchasing done, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women's insight during the creative process. In fact, the first American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product. Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message "A skin you love to touch".
In the 1920s psychologists Walter D. Scott and John B. Watson
John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a psychological school.Cohn, Aaron S. 2014.Watson, John B." Pp. 1429–1430 in ''T ...
contributed applied psychological theory to the field of advertising. Scott said, "Man has been called the reasoning animal but he could with greater truthfulness be called the creature of suggestion. He is reasonable, but he is to a greater extent suggestible". He demonstrated this through his advertising technique of a direct command to the consumer.
Radio from the 1920s
In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers, followed by non-profit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
s such as schools, clubs and civic groups who also set up their own stations.[ McChesney, Robert, ''Educators and the Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928–35'', Rich Media, Poor Democracy, (1999)] Retailer and consumer goods manufacturers quickly recognized radio's potential to reach consumers in their home and soon adopted advertising techniques that would allow their messages to stand out; slogans, mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...
s, and jingle
A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...
s began to appear on radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
in the 1920s and early television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
in the 1930s.
The rise of mass media communications allowed manufacturers of branded goods to bypass retailers by advertising directly to consumers. This was a major paradigm shift which forced manufacturers to focus on the brand and stimulated the need for superior insights into consumer purchasing, consumption and usage behaviour; their needs, wants and aspirations. The earliest radio drama series were sponsored by soap manufacturers and the genre became known as a ''soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
.'' Before long, radio station owners realized they could increase advertising revenue by selling 'air-time' in small time allocations which could be sold to multiple businesses. By the 1930s, these ''advertising spots,'' as the packets of time became known, were being sold by the station's geographical sales representatives, ushering in an era of national radio advertising.
By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize the way in which consumers were developing personal relationships with their brands in a social/psychological/anthropological sense. Advertisers began to use motivational research and consumer research to gather insights into consumer purchasing. Strong branded campaigns for Chrysler and Exxon/Esso, using insights drawn research methods from psychology and cultural anthropology, led to some of the most enduring campaigns of the 20th century.
Commercial television in the 1950s
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
''The United States Steel Hour'' is an anthology series which brought hour long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation (U. S ...
. 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.
Cable television from the 1980s
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
QVC (short for "Quality Value Convenience") is an American free-to-air television network, and flagship shopping channel specializing in televised home shopping, owned by Qurate Retail Group. Founded in 1986 by Joseph Segel in West Chester, Pen ...
, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada
ShopTV Canada was a Canadian English language cable television direct response television shopping service owned by Torstar Media Group Television.
Programming
ShopTV Canada featured direct response advertising in short and long form with lengths ...
.
Internet from the 1990s
With the advent of the ad server
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on Web sites, mobile apps, and Connected TVs. Ad serving technology companies provide software to Web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads th ...
, online advertising grew, contributing to the " dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupon
In marketing, a coupon is a ticket or document that can be redeemed for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product.
Customarily, coupons are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods
or by retailers, to be used in r ...
s to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, some websites, including the search engine Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, changed online advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
by personalizing ads based on web browsing behavior. This has led to other similar efforts and an increase in interactive advertising
Interactive advertising uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements, corporate or political groups.
In the inaugural issue of the '' Journal of ...
.
The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media since 1925. In 1925, the main advertising media in America 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; by 2017, the balance between broadcast and online advertising had shifted, with online spending exceeding broadcast. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower – about 2.4 percent.
Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service. It is a type of publicity. The term was popularized by Jay Conrad Levinson's 1984 ...
involves 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 type of advertising is unpredictable, 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 campaigns utilizing social network service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
s such as Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
or Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
.
The advertising business model has also been adapted in recent years. In media for equity, advertising is not sold, but provided to start-up companies in return for equity. If the company grows and is sold, the media companies receive cash for their shares.
Domain name
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
registrants (usually those who register and renew domains as an investment) sometimes "park" their domains and allow advertising companies to place ads on their sites in return for per-click payments. These ads are typically driven by pay per click search engines like Google or Yahoo, but ads can sometimes be placed directly on targeted domain names through a domain lease or by making contact with the registrant of a domain name that describes a product. Domain name registrants are generally easy to identify through WHOIS
WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...
records that are publicly available at registrar websites.
Classification
Advertising may be categorized in a variety of ways, including by style, target audience, geographic scope, medium, or purpose.[Courtland L. Bovee, William F. Arens. Contemporary Advertising, Fourth Edition. Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1992.] For example, in print advertising, classification by style can include display advertising (ads with design elements sold by size) vs. classified advertising (ads without design elements sold by the word or line). Advertising may be local, national or global. An ad campaign may be directed toward consumers or to businesses. The purpose of an ad may be to raise awareness (brand advertising), or to elicit an immediate sale (direct response advertising). The term above the line (ATL) is used for advertising involving mass media; more targeted forms of advertising and promotion are referred to as below the line (BTL). The two terms date back to 1954 when Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
began paying their advertising agencies differently from other promotional agencies. In the 2010s, as advertising technology developed, a new term, through the line (TTL) began to come into use, referring to integrated advertising campaigns
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ideas, beliefs, and conce ...
.
Traditional media
Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
, street furniture
Street furniture is a collective term for objects and pieces of equipment installed along streets and roads for various purposes. It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traf ...
components, printed flyers and rack card
A rack card is a document used for commercial advertising, frequently in convenience stores, hotels, landmarks, restaurants, rest area
A rest area is a public facility located next to a large thoroughfare such as a motorway, expressway, or h ...
s, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linkin ...
s, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting
Skywriting is the process of using one or more small aircraft, able to expel special smoke during flight, to fly in certain patterns that create writing readable from the ground. These messages can be advertisements, general messages of celebrat ...
, bus stop benches, human billboards and forehead advertising
Forehead advertising is a type of nontraditional advertising that involves using a person's forehead as Media space, advertising space.
History
''The Wall Street Journal'' ran a piece about John Carver and his London Creative Agency, Cunning, in ...
, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes (" logojets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any situation in which an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.
;Television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
: Television advertising is one of the most expensive types of advertising; networks charge large amounts for commercial airtime during popular events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television – with an audience of over 108 million and studies showing that 50% of those only tuned in to see the advertisements. During the 2014 edition of this game, the average thirty-second ad cost US$4 million, and $8 million was charged for a 60-second spot. Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. Virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life. This technique is especially used in televised sporting events. Virtual product placement is also possible. An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The name blends the words "information" and "commercial". The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase
In the field of consumer behavior, an impulse purchase or impulse buying is an unplanned decision by a consumer to buy a product or service, made just before a purchase. One who tends to make such purchases is referred to as an impulse purchase ...
, so that the target sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing pre ...
or website. Infomercials describe and often demonstrate products, and commonly have testimonials from customers and industry professionals.
;Radio: Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
advertisements are broadcast as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for airing the commercials. While radio has the limitation of being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite this as an advantage. Radio is an expanding medium that can be found on air, and also online. According to Arbitron, radio has approximately 241.6 million weekly listeners, or more than 93 percent of the U.S. population.
;Online: Online advertising is a form of promotion
Promotion may refer to:
Marketing
* Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...
that uses the Internet and World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Online ads are delivered by an ad server. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results page
Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user. The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query. The p ...
s, banner ad
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking ...
s, in pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pay-per-click is usually ...
text ads, rich media ads, Social network advertising
Social network advertising, also social media targeting, is a group of terms that are used to describe forms of online advertising/digital marketing that focus on social networking services. One of the major benefits of this type of advertising is ...
, online classified advertising, advertising network
An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser's d ...
s and e-mail marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to s ...
, including e-mail spam
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).
The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...
. A newer form of online advertising is Native Ads; they go in a website's news feed and are supposed to improve user experience by being less intrusive. However, some people argue this practice is deceptive.
;Domain names: Domain name advertising is most commonly done through pay per click web search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
s, however, advertisers often lease space directly on domain names that generically describe their products. When an Internet user visits a website by typing a domain name directly into their web browser, this is known as "direct navigation", or "type in" web traffic. Although many Internet users search for ideas and products using search engines and mobile phones, a large number of users around the world still use the address bar. They will type a keyword into the address bar such as "geraniums" and add ".com" to the end of it. Sometimes they will do the same with ".org" or a country-code Top Level Domain (TLD such as ".co.uk" for the United Kingdom or ".ca" for Canada). When Internet users type in a generic keyword and add .com or another top-level domain
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...
(TLD) ending, it produces a targeted sales lead. Domain name advertising was originally developed by Oingo (later known as Applied Semantics), one of Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
's early acquisitions.
;Product placements: is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie '' Minority Report'', where Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), known professionally as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actors, he has received various accolades, including an Honorary Palme d'Or and three Go ...
's character John Anderton owns a phone with the ''Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
'' logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the '' Bulgari'' logo. Another example of advertising in film is in ''I, Robot
''I, Robot'' is a fixup (compilation) novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines ''Super Science Stories'' and '' Astounding Science Fiction'' be ...
'', where main character played by Will Smith
Willard Carroll Smith II (born September 25, 1968), also known by his stage name The Fresh Prince, is an American actor and rapper. He began his acting career starring as a fictionalized version of himself on the NBC sitcom '' The Fresh ...
mentions his ''Converse
Converse may refer to:
Mathematics and logic
* Converse (logic), the result of reversing the two parts of a definite or implicational statement
** Converse implication, the converse of a material implication
** Converse nonimplication, a logical c ...
'' shoes several times, calling them "classics", because the film is set far in the future. ''I, Robot'' and '' Spaceballs'' also showcase futuristic cars with the ''Audi
Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
Th ...
'' and ''Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...
'' logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie ''The Matrix Reloaded
''The Matrix Reloaded'' is a 2003 American science-fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is a sequel to '' The Matrix'' (1999) and the second installment in the ''Matrix'' film series. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Lau ...
'', which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches
Omega SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Founded by Louis Brandt in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848, the company formerly operated as ''La Generale Watch Co.'' until incorporating the name ''Omega'' in 1903, becoming ' ...
, Ford
Ford commonly refers to:
* Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford
* Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river
Ford may also refer to:
Ford Motor Company
* Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
* Ford F ...
, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
films, most notably '' Casino Royale''. In " Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front. ''Blade Runner
''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
'' includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlant ...
billboard.
;Print: Print advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics. One form of print advertising is classified advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly targeted ad paid by the word or line. Another form of print advertising is the display ad, which is generally a larger ad with design elements that typically run in an article section of a newspaper.
;Outdoor:
Billboards, also known as hoardings in some parts of the world, are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large numbers of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and in stadiums. The form known as street advertising first came to prominence in the UK by Street Advertising Services to create outdoor advertising on street furniture and pavements. Working with products such as Reverse Graffiti
Reverse graffiti is a method of creating temporary or semi-permanent images on walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from a surface. It can also be done by simply removing dirt with the fingertip from windows or other dirty surfaces, such as w ...
, air dancers and 3D pavement advertising, for getting brand messages out into public spaces. Sheltered outdoor advertising combines outdoor with indoor advertisement by placing large mobile, structures (tents
A tent () is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over, attached to a frame of poles or a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using gu ...
) in public places on temporary bases. The large outer advertising space aims to exert a strong pull on the observer, the product is promoted indoors, where the creative decor can intensify the impression. Mobile billboards are generally vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be on dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes preselected by clients, they can also be specially equipped cargo trucks or, in some cases, large banners strewn from planes. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit
A backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs). As LCDs do not produce light by themselves—unlike, for example, cathode ray tube (CRT), plasma (PDP) or OLED displays—they need illumination ( ambient light or a ...
, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example, continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements. Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including: target advertising, one-day and long-term campaigns, conventions, sporting events, store openings and similar promotional events, and big advertisements from smaller companies.
;Point-of-sale: In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout counters (a.k.a. POP – point of purchase display), eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video displays.
;Novelties: Advertising printed on small tangible items such as coffee mugs, T-shirts, pens, bags, and such is known as novelty advertising. Some printers specialize in printing novelty items, which can then be distributed directly by the advertiser, or items may be distributed as part of a cross-promotion, such as ads on fast food containers.
;Celebrity endorsements: Advertising in which a celebrity endorses a product or brand leverages celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products or to promote specific stores' or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products. The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however; one mistake by a celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...
of a brand. For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael Phelps
Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American former competitive swimmer. He is the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time with a total of 28 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold med ...
' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana. Celebrities such as Britney Spears have advertised for multiple products including Pepsi, Candies from Kohl's, Twister, NASCAR, and Toyota.
; Aerial: Using aircraft, balloons or airship
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
In early ...
s to create or display advertising media. Skywriting
Skywriting is the process of using one or more small aircraft, able to expel special smoke during flight, to fly in certain patterns that create writing readable from the ground. These messages can be advertisements, general messages of celebrat ...
is a notable example.
New media approaches
A new advertising approach is known as advanced advertising, which is data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...
-driven advertising, using large quantities of data, precise measuring tools and precise targeting. Advanced advertising also makes it easier for companies which sell ad-space to attribute customer purchases to the ads they display or broadcast.
Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward the usage of the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders
A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to d ...
(DVRs) such as TiVo
TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...
.
Online advertising began with unsolicited bulk e-mail advertising known as "e-mail spam
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming).
The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...
". Spam has been a problem for e-mail users since 1978. As new online communication channels became available, advertising followed. The first banner ad appeared on the World Wide Web in 1994. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.
In online display advertising, display ads generate awareness quickly. Unlike search, which requires someone to be aware of a need, display advertising can drive awareness of something new and without previous knowledge. Display works well for direct response. Display is not only used for generating awareness, it's used for direct response campaigns that link to a landing page with a clear 'call to action'.
As the mobile phone became a new mass medium in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in Finland, mobile advertising
Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mo ...
followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached $2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.
More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing
Engagement marketing, sometimes called "experiential marketing", "event marketing", "on-ground marketing", "live marketing", "participation marketing", "Loyalty Marketing", or "special events", is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumer ...
campaigns. A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D barcode
A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...
, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.
Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
s and the International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...
.
Unpaid advertising (also called "publicity advertising"), can include personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, "Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
" = "photocopier
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
", " Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline
Vaseline ()Also pronounced with the main stress on the last syllable . is an American brand of petroleum jelly-based products owned by transnational company Unilever. Products include plain petroleum jelly and a selection of skin creams, soa ...
" = petroleum jelly, " Hoover" = vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum or a hoover, is a device that causes suction in order to remove dirt from floors, upholstery, draperies, and other surfaces. It is generally electrically driven.
The dirt is collected by either a ...
, and " Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage
An adhesive bandage, also called a sticking plaster, medical plaster, or simply plaster in British English, is a small medical dressing used for injuries not serious enough to require a full-size bandage. They are also known by the genericized t ...
). However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object. Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a generic trademark
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products or ...
– turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.
Early in its life, The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
aired short programming breaks called "Content Wraps", to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break. The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences
Herbal Essences is a brand of hair care products line by Procter & Gamble. The brand was founded in 1971 as the single shampoo Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo (officially typeset as ''Clairol herbal essence shampoo''). There are 29 collections of ...
, Crest
Crest or CREST may refer to:
Buildings
*The Crest (Huntington, New York), a historic house in Suffolk County, New York
*"The Crest", an alternate name for 63 Wall Street, in Manhattan, New York
*Crest Castle (Château Du Crest), Jussy, Switzerla ...
, Guitar Hero II
''Guitar Hero II'' is a music rhythm video game developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2 and Activision for the Xbox 360. It is the second main installment in the ''Guitar Hero'' series and is the sequel to 2005 ...
, CoverGirl
CoverGirl is an American cosmetics brand founded in Maryland, United States, by the Noxzema Chemical Company. It was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 1989 and later acquired by Coty, Inc. in 2016. The Noxell Company advertised this cosmetics li ...
, and Toyota
is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...
.
A new promotion concept has appeared, "ARvertising", advertising on augmented reality technology.
Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control
Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and forced re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashin ...
), and the pervasiveness of mass messages ( propaganda).
Rise in new media
With the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Pop-up, Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Barry Allen)
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Wally West, the first Kid F ...
, banner, pop-under, advergaming
An advergame is a form of advertising in video games, in which the video game is developed by or in close collaboration with a corporate entity for purposes of advertising a brand-name product. While other video games may use in-game advertising (s ...
, and email advertisements (all of which are often unwanted or spam in the case of email) are now commonplace. Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them. In the last three quarters of 2009, mobile and Internet advertising grew by 18% and 9% respectively, while older media advertising saw declines: −10.1% (TV), −11.7% (radio), −14.8% (magazines) and −18.7% (newspapers). Between 2008 and 2014, U.S. newspapers lost more than half their print advertising revenue.
Niche marketing
Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche market using niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of the long tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market
The term "mass market" refers to a market for goods produced on a large scale for a significant number of end consumers. The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds wi ...
audience possible. However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products. Among others, Comcast Spotlight
Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, doing business as Xfinity, is an American telecommunications company and division of Comcast Corporation used to market consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the com ...
is one such advertiser employing this method in their video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...
menus. These advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a particular business or practice, from their home. This causes the viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.
Niche marketing could also be helped by bringing the issue of colour into advertisements. Different colours play major roles when it comes to marketing strategies, for example, seeing the blue can promote a sense of calmness and gives a sense of security which is why many social networks such as Facebook use blue in their logos.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...
is an example of niche marketing. Google calculates the primary purpose of a website and adjusts ads accordingly; it uses keywords on the page (or even in emails) to find the general ideas of topics disused and places ads that will most likely be clicked on by viewers of the email account or website visitors.
Crowdsourcing
The concept of crowdsourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
advertisements. User-generated ads are created by people, as opposed to an advertising agency or the company themselves, often resulting from brand sponsored advertising competitions. For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, allowing people to create their own Doritos
Doritos () is an American brand of flavored tortilla chips produced since 1964 by Frito-Lay, a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo. The original Doritos were not flavored. The first flavor was Toasted Corn, released in 1966, followed by Taco in ...
commercials. Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs. Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays relaunched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl. The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads. In fact, the winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter
The ''USA Today'' Super Bowl Ad Meter is an annual survey taken of television commercials by ''USA Today'' in a live poll during the telecast in the United States of the Super Bowl, the annual professional American football championship game of the ...
as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were found by Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to be the "most buzzed-about". Another example of companies using crowdsourcing successfully is the beverage company Jones Soda
Jones Soda Co. is a beverage company based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It bottles and distributes soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages, energy drinks, and candy.
History
The 1990s
The company was founded by Peter Van Stolk in 1995 ...
that encourages consumers to participate in the label design themselves.
This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated advertising competitions on behalf of a company. Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions for brands such as Google, Nike
Nike often refers to:
* Nike (mythology), a Greek goddess who personifies victory
* Nike, Inc., a major American producer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment
Nike may also refer to:
People
* Nike (name), a surname and feminine give ...
, Hershey's, General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
, Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
, NBC Universal
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are ...
, Zinio, and Mini Cooper Mini Cooper may refer to:
*Cars of the original Mini series called the "Mini Cooper", made by the British Motor Corporation and its successors 1961–1971, and 1990–2000
*Cars of the Mini (marque), including a number of different models produced ...
. Crowdsourcing remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the advertising industry is still unclear.
Globalization
Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global. For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...
in the creative process, maximising local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company's speed of implementation. Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.
Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region. The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad contribute to its success is how economies of scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...
are maximized. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market. Market research
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...
measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.
Foreign public messaging
Foreign governments, particularly those that own marketable commercial products or services, often promote their interests and positions through the advertising of those goods because the target audience is not only largely unaware of the forum as a vehicle for foreign messaging but also willing to receive the message while in a mental state of absorbing information from advertisements during television commercial breaks, while reading a periodical, or while passing by billboards in public spaces. A prime example of this messaging technique is advertising campaigns to promote international travel. While advertising foreign destinations and services may stem from the typical goal of increasing revenue by drawing more tourism, some travel campaigns carry the additional or alternative intended purpose of promoting good sentiments or improving existing ones among the target audience towards a given nation or region. It is common for advertising promoting foreign countries to be produced and distributed by the tourism ministries of those countries, so these ads often carry political statements and/or depictions of the foreign government's desired international public perception. Additionally, a wide range of foreign airlines and travel-related services which advertise separately from the destinations, themselves, are owned by their respective governments; examples include, though are not limited to, the Emirates airline
Emirates ( ar, طَيَران الإمارات DMG: ''Ṭayarān Al-Imārāt'') is one of two flag carriers of the United Arab Emirates (the other being Etihad). Based in Garhoud, Dubai, the airline is a subsidiary of The Emirates Group, whic ...
(Dubai
Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...
), Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines ( abbreviation: SIA) is the flag carrier airline of the Republic of Singapore with its hub located at Singapore Changi Airport. The airline is notable for highlighting the Singapore Girl as its central figure in corporat ...
(Singapore), Qatar Airways
Qatar Airways Company Q.C.S.C. ( ar, القطرية, ''al-Qaṭariya''), operating as Qatar Airways, is the state-owned flag carrier airline of Qatar. Headquartered in the Qatar Airways Tower in Doha, the airline operates a hub-and-spoke netwo ...
(Qatar
Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it ...
), China Airlines
China Airlines (CAL; ) is the state-owned flag carrier of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of its two major airlines along with EVA Air. It is headquartered in Taoyuan International Airport and operates over 1,400 flights weekly (in ...
(Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
/ Republic of China), and Air China (People's Republic of China). By depicting their destinations, airlines, and other services in a favorable and pleasant light, countries market themselves to populations abroad in a manner that could mitigate prior public impressions.
Diversification
In the realm of advertising agencies
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
, continued industry diversification has seen observers note that "big global clients don't need big global agencies any more". This is reflected by the growth of non-traditional agencies in various global markets, such as Canadian business TAXI
A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choic ...
and SMART
Smart or SMART may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Smart'' (Hey! Say! JUMP album), 2014
* Smart (Hotels.com), former mascot of Hotels.com
* ''Smart'' (Sleeper album), 1995 debut album by Sleeper
* '' SMart'', a children's television se ...
in Australia and has been referred to as "a revolution in the ad world".
New technology
The ability to record shows on digital video recorders (such as TiVo) allow watchers to record the programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials. Additionally, as more seasons of pre-recorded box sets are offered for sale of television programs; fewer people watch the shows on TV. However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive additional profits from these sets.
To counter this effect, a variety of strategies have been employed. Many advertisers have opted for product placement on TV shows like Survivor. Other strategies include integrating advertising with internet-connected program guidess (EPGs), advertising on companion devices (like smartphones and tablets) during the show, and creating mobile apps
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on des ...
for TV programs. Additionally, some like brands have opted for social television
Social television is the union of television and social media. Millions of people now share their TV experience with other viewers on social media such as Twitter and Facebook using smartphones and tablets. TV networks and rights holders are increa ...
sponsorship.
The emerging technology of drone display
Drone art (also known as drone display or drone light show) is the use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), often quadcopters, flying in a coordinated fashion with light fixtures attached. They are usually equipped with multiple LEDs ...
s has recently been used for advertising purposes.
Education
In recent years there have been several media literacy initiatives, and more specifically concerning advertising, that seek to empower citizens in the face of media advertising campaigns.
Advertising education Advertising has been taught around the world for over 100 years. Originating at New York University with the course "Advertising", the subject is now offered through certificate, bachelors, masters, and doctorate programs in over 150 academic instit ...
has become popular with bachelor, master and doctorate degrees becoming available in the emphasis. A surge in advertising interest is typically attributed to the strong relationship advertising plays in cultural and technological changes, such as the advance of online social networking. A unique model for teaching advertising is the student-run advertising agency A student-run advertising agency acts like a real advertising agency, but is operated by students. The agency can be included in the academic curriculum, allowing students to work in the agency for academic credit. Or, the agency can simply be house ...
, where advertising students create campaigns for real companies. Organizations such as the American Advertising Federation
The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest national advertising trade association
A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry ...
establish companies with students to create these campaigns.
Purposes
Advertising is at the front of delivering the proper message to customers and prospective customers. The purpose of advertising is to inform the consumers about their product and convince customers that a company's services or products are the best, enhance the image of the company, point out and create a need for products or services, demonstrate new uses for established products, announce new products and programs, reinforce the salespeople's individual messages, draw customers to the business, and to hold existing customers.
Sales promotions and brand loyalty
Sales promotions are another way to advertise. Sales promotions are double purposed because they are used to gather information about what type of customers one draws in and where they are, and to jump start sales. Sales promotions include things like contests and games, sweepstakes, product giveaways, samples coupons, loyalty programs, and discounts. The ultimate goal of sales promotions is to stimulate potential customers to action.
Criticisms
While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited commercial e-mail and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...
s. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. This increasing difficulty in limiting exposure to specific audiences can result in negative backlash for advertisers. In tandem with these criticisms, the advertising industry has seen low approval rates in surveys and negative cultural portrayals.
One of the most controversial criticisms of advertisement in the present day is that of the predominance of advertising of foods high in sugar, fat, and salt specifically to children. Critics claim that food advertisements targeting children are exploitive and are not sufficiently balanced with proper nutritional education to help children understand the consequences of their food choices. Additionally, children may not understand that they are being sold something, and are therefore more impressionable. Michelle Obama has criticized large food companies for advertising unhealthy foods largely towards children and has requested that food companies either limit their advertising to children or advertise foods that are more in line with dietary guidelines. The other criticisms include the change that are brought by those advertisements on the society and also the deceiving ads that are aired and published by the corporations. Cosmetic and health industry
The healthcare industry (also called the medical industry or health economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, a ...
are the ones which exploited the highest and created reasons of concern.
A 2021 study found that for more than 80% of brands, advertising had a negative return on investment. Unsolicited ads have been criticized as attention theft
Attention theft is a theory in economic sociology and psychology which describes situations in which marketers serve advertisements to consumers who have not consented to view them and who are given nothing in return. Perpetrators seek to distr ...
.
Regulation
There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of advertising. Some examples include restrictions for advertising alcohol, tobacco
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
or gambling
Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three el ...
imposed in many countries, as well as the bans around advertising to children
Advertising to children refers to the act of advertising products or services to children as defined by national laws and advertising standards.
Scope and form
Advertising to children can take place on traditional media such as television, radio ...
, which exist in parts of Europe. Advertising regulation focuses heavily on the veracity
Veracity may refer to:
* ''Veracity'' (album), a 2008 album by Evacuate Chicago
* Veracity (ethics), an ethical principle
* ''Veracity'' (novel), a 2010 novel by Laura Bynum
* Veracity, an automobile from the early 1900s built by the Smith Autom ...
of the claims and as such, there are often tighter restrictions placed around advertisements for food and healthcare products.
The advertising industries within some countries rely less on laws and more on systems of self-regulation. Advertisers and the media agree on a code of advertising standards that they attempt to uphold. The general aim of such codes is to ensure that any advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'. Some self-regulatory organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding the standards or codes like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK.
In the UK, most forms of outdoor advertising
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, also called outdoor advertising, outdoor media, and out-of-home media, is advertising experienced outside of the home. This includes billboards, wallscapes, and posters seen while "on the go". It also includes pla ...
such as the display of billboards is regulated by the UK Town and County Planning system. Currently, the display of an advertisement without consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2,500 per offense. In the US, many communities believe that many forms of outdoor advertising blight the public realm. As long ago as the 1960s in the US, there were attempts to ban billboard advertising in the open countryside. Cities such as São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
have introduced an outright ban with London also having specific legislation to control unlawful displays.
Some governments restrict the languages that can be used in advertisements, but advertisers may employ tricks to try avoiding them. In France for instance, advertisers sometimes print English words in bold and French translations in fine print to deal with Article 120 of the 1994 Toubon Law limiting the use of English.
The advertising of pricing information is another topic of concern for governments. In the United States for instance, it is common for businesses to only mention the existence and amount of applicable taxes at a later stage of a transaction. In Canada and New Zealand, taxes can be listed as separate items, as long as they are quoted up-front. In most other countries, the advertised price must include all applicable taxes, enabling customers to easily know how much it will cost them.
Theory
Hierarchy-of-effects models
Various competing models of hierarchies of effects attempt to provide a theoretical underpinning to advertising practice.
* The model of Clow and Baack clarifies the objectives of an advertising campaign and for each individual advertisement. The model postulates six steps a buyer moves through when making a purchase:
*# Awareness
*# Knowledge
*# Liking
*# Preference
*# Conviction
*# Purchase
* Means-end theory suggests that an advertisement should contain a message or means that leads the consumer to a desired end-state.
* Leverage points aim to move the consumer from understanding a product's benefits to linking those benefits with personal values.
Marketing mix
The marketing mix
The term "marketing mix" is a foundation model for businesses, historically centered around product, price, place, and promotion (also known as the "4 Ps"). The marketing mix has been defined as the "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to ...
was proposed by professor E. Jerome McCarthy in the 1960s. It consists of four basic elements called the "four Ps". Product is the first P representing the actual product. Price represents the process of determining the value of a product. Place represents the variables of getting the product to the consumer such as distribution channels, market coverage and movement organization. The last P stands for Promotion which is the process of reaching the target market and convincing them to buy the product.
In the 1990s, the concept of four Cs was introduced as a more customer-driven replacement of four P's. There are two theories based on four Cs: Lauterborn's four Cs (''consumer'', ''cost'', ''communication'', ''convenience'')
and Shimizu's four Cs ('' commodity'', ''cost
In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in whic ...
'', ''communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...
'', '' channel'') in the 7Cs Compass Model (Co-marketing Co-marketing (Collaborate marketing) is a marketing practice where two companies cooperate with separate distribution channels, sometimes including profit sharing. It is frequently confused with co-promotion.
Commensal (symbiotic) marketing
Comme ...
). Communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...
s can include advertising, sales promotion
Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix. The primary elements in the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity/public relations. Sales promotion uses both media and non-media marketin ...
, public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...
, publicity, personal selling
Personal selling occurs when a sales representative meets with a potential client for the purpose of transacting a sale. Many sales representatives rely on a sequential sales process that typically includes nine steps. Some sales representative ...
, corporate identity
A corporate identity or corporate image is the manner in which a corporation, firm or business enterprise presents itself to the public (such as customers and investors as well as employees). The corporate identity is typically visualized by ...
, internal communication, SNS, and MIS
MIS or mis may refer to:
Science and technology
* Management information system
* Marine isotope stage, stages of the Earth's climate
* Maximal independent set, in graph theory
* Metal-insulator-semiconductor, e.g., in MIS capacitor
* Minimally ...
.
Research
Advertising research is a specialized form of research that works to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising. It entails numerous forms of research which employ different methodologies. Advertising research includes pre-testing (also known as copy testing
{{marketing
Copy testing is a specialized field of marketing research that determines an advertisement's effectiveness based on consumer responses, feedback, and behavior. Also known as pre-testing, it might address all media channels including te ...
) and post-testing of ads and/or campaigns.
Pre-testing includes a wide range of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including: focus groups, in-depth target audience interviews (one-on-one interviews), small-scale quantitative studies and physiological measurement. The goal of these investigations is to better understand how different groups respond to various messages and visual prompts, thereby providing an assessment of how well the advertisement meets its communications goals.
Post-testing employs many of the same techniques as pre-testing, usually with a focus on understanding the change in awareness or attitude attributable to the advertisement. With the emergence of digital advertising technologies, many firms have begun to continuously post-test ads using real-time data. This may take the form of A/B split-testing or multivariate testing.
Continuous ad tracking
Ad tracking, also known as post-testing or ad effectiveness tracking, is in-market research that monitors a brand’s performance including brand and advertising awareness, product trial and usage, and attitudes about the brand versus their comp ...
and the Communicus System are competing examples of post-testing advertising research types.
Semiotics
Meanings between consumers and marketers depict signs and symbols that are encoded in everyday objects. Semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
is the study of signs and how they are interpreted. Advertising has many hidden signs and meanings within brand names
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
, logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning. Ari ...
, package designs, print advertisements, and television advertisements
A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...
. Semiotics aims to study and interpret the message being conveyed in (for example) advertisements. Logos and advertisements can be interpreted at two levels – known as the surface level and the underlying level. The surface level uses signs creatively to create an image or personality for a product. These signs can be images, words, fonts, color
Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...
s, or slogans. The underlying level is made up of hidden meanings. The combination of images, words, color
Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...
s, and slogans must be interpreted by the audience or consumer. The "key to advertising analysis" is the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the object and the signified is the mental concept. A product has a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the color, brand name, logo design, and technology. The signified has two meanings known as denotative and connotative. The denotative meaning is the meaning of the product. A television's denotative meaning might be that it is high definition. The connotative meaning is the product's deep and hidden meaning. A connotative meaning of a television would be that it is top-of-the-line.
Apple's commercials used a black silhouette
A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...
of a person that was the age of Apple's target market. They placed the silhouette in front of a blue screen so that the picture behind the silhouette could be constantly changing. However, the one thing that stays the same in these ads is that there is music in the background and the silhouette is listening to that music on a white iPod through white headphones. Through advertising, the white color on a set of earphones now signifies that the music device is an iPod. The white color signifies almost all of Apple's products.
The semiotics of gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
plays a key influence on the way in which signs are interpreted. When considering gender roles in advertising, individuals are influenced by three categories. Certain characteristics of stimuli may enhance or decrease the elaboration of the message (if the product is perceived as feminine or masculine). Second, the characteristics of individuals can affect attention and elaboration of the message (tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
al or non-traditional gender role
A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cent ...
orientation). Lastly, situational factors may be important to influence the elaboration of the message.
There are two types of marketing communication
Marketing Communications (MC, marcom(s), marcomm(s) or just simply communications) refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination.Tomse, & Snoj, 2014 Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate ...
claims-objective and subjective. Objective claims stem from the extent to which the claim associates the brand with a tangible product or service feature. For instance, a camera may have auto-focus features. Subjective claims convey emotional, subjective, impressions of intangible aspects of a product or service. They are non-physical features of a product or service that cannot be directly perceived, as they have no physical reality. For instance the brochure
A brochure is originally an informative paper document (often also used for advertising) that can be folded into a template, pamphlet, or leaflet. A brochure can also be a set of related unfolded papers put into a pocket folder or packet or can ...
has a beautiful design. Male
Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization.
A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...
s tend to respond better to objective marketing-communications claims while female
Female ( symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gametes than a male. Females ...
s tend to respond better to subjective marketing communications claims.
Voiceover
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non- diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations. ...
s are commonly used in advertising. Most voiceovers are done by men, with figures of up to 94% having been reported. There have been more female voiceovers in recent years, but mainly for food, household products, and feminine-care products.
Gender effects on comprehension
According to a 1977 study by David Statt, females process information comprehensively, while males process information through heuristic devices such as procedures, methods or strategies for solving problems, which could have an effect on how they interpret advertising. According to this study, men prefer to have available and apparent cues to interpret the message, whereas females engage in more creative, associative, imagery-laced interpretation. Later research by a Danish team found that advertising attempts to persuade men to improve their appearance or performance, whereas its approach to women aims at transformation
Transformation may refer to:
Science and mathematics
In biology and medicine
* Metamorphosis, the biological process of changing physical form after birth or hatching
* Malignant transformation, the process of cells becoming cancerous
* Tran ...
toward an impossible ideal of female presentation. In Paul Suggett's article "The Objectification of Women in Advertising" he discusses the negative impact that these women in advertisements, who are too perfect to be real, have on women, as well as men, in real life. Advertising's manipulation of women's aspiration to these ideal types as portrayed in film, in erotic art, in advertising, on stage, within music videos and through other media exposures requires at least a conditioned rejection of female reality and thereby takes on a highly ideological cast. Studies show that these expectations of women and young girls negatively affect their views about their bodies and appearances. These advertisements are directed towards men. Not everyone agrees: one critic viewed this monologic, gender-specific interpretation of advertising as excessively skewed and politicized. There are some companies like Dove
Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...
and aerie
Aerie (a variant of eyrie) is the bird nest of an eagle, falcon, hawk, or other bird of prey.
Aerie may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities
* Aerie (Baldur's Gate), Aerie (''Baldur's Gate''), a character in ''Baldur' ...
that are creating commercials to portray more natural women, with less post production manipulation, so more women and young girls are able to relate to them.
More recent research by Martin (2003) reveals that males and females differ in how they react to advertising depending on their mood at the time of exposure to the ads and on the affective tone of the advertising. When feeling sad, males prefer happy ads to boost their mood. In contrast, females prefer happy ads when they are feeling happy. The television programs in which ads are embedded influence a viewer's mood state. Susan Wojcicki, author of the article "Ads that Empower Women don't just Break Stereotypes—They're also Effective" discusses how advertising to women has changed since the first Barbie
Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by American toy company Mattel, Inc. and launched on March 9, 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration. ...
commercial, where a little girl tells the doll that, she wants to be just like her. Little girls grow up watching advertisements of scantily clad women advertising things from trucks to burgers and Wojcicki states that this shows girls that they are either arm candy or eye candy.
Alternatives
Other approaches to revenue
In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business.
Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...
include donation
A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as ...
s, paid subscriptions, microtransactions, and data monetization
Data monetization, a form of monetization, may refer to the act of generating measurable economic benefits from available data sources (analytics). Less commonly, it may also refer to the act of monetizing data services. In the case of analytics, ...
. Websites and applications are "ad-free" when not using advertisements at all for revenue. For example, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
provides free content by receiving funding from charitable donation
A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as ...
s.
"Fathers" of advertising
* Late 1700s - Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
(1706–1790)- "father of advertising in America"[Winfield Scott Downs, American Historical Company, American Historical Society, 1940 - Biography & Autobiography
(p260-263]
J. Henry Smythe, Jr - "the world's best known slogan writer... compiled and edited "The Amazing Benjamin Franklin," published in 1929 ... approved by the American Library Association. ... Over forty official contributions ... Each paid tribute to some special "side" of Franklin ... "Franklin, the Printer," is a Craftsman, Father of Advertising in America, Editor, Publisher ..."
* Late 1800s - Thomas J. Barratt (1841-1914) of London - called "the father of modern advertising" by T.F.G. Coates
* Early 1900s - J. Henry ("Slogan") Smythe, Jr of Philadelphia - "world's best known slogan writer"
* Early 1900s - Albert Lasker
Albert Davis Lasker (May 1, 1880 – May 30, 1952) was an American businessman who played a major role in shaping modern advertising. He was raised in Galveston, Texas, where his father was the president of several banks. Moving to Chicago, he be ...
(1880-1952) - the "father of modern advertising"; defined advertising as "salesmanship in print, driven by a reason why"
* Mid-1900s - David Ogilvy
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
(1911–1999) - advertising tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, known as the "father of advertising"
Influential thinkers in advertising theory and practice
* N. W. Ayer & Son - probably the first advertising agency to use mass media (i.e. telegraph) in a promotional campaign
* Ernest Dichter
Ernest Dichter (14 August 1907 in Vienna – 21 November 1991 in Peekskill, New York) was an American psychologist and marketing expert known as the "father of motivational research." Dichter pioneered the application of Freudian psychoanalytic ...
- developed the field of motivational research, used extensively in advertising
* E. St. Elmo Lewis - developed the first hierarchy of effects model (AIDA) used in sales and advertising
* Arthur Nielsen - founded one of the earliest international advertising agencies and developed ratings for radio & TV
* David Ogilvy
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
- pioneered the positioning concept and advocated of the use of brand image in advertising
* Charles Coolidge Parlin
Charles Coolidge Parlin (1872 – October 15, 1942) was the American "manager of the division of commercial research of the Curtis Publishing Company" in charge of selling advertising spots in the ''Saturday Evening Post''. He is credited as being ...
(1872–1942) - regarded as the pioneer of the use of marketing research in advertising
* Rosser Reeves
Rosser Reeves (10 September 1910 – 24 January 1984) was an American advertising executive and pioneer of television advertising; Reeves generated millions for his clients. The Ted Bates agency, where he rose to chairman, exists today as Bates ...
(1910–1984) - developed the concept of the unique selling proposition (USP) and advocated the use of repetition in advertising
* Al Ries
Alfred Paul Ries (November 14, 1926 – October 7, 2022) was an American marketing professional and author. He was the cofounder and chairman of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Ries & Ries with his partner and daughter, Laura Ries. Along with ...
- advertising executive, author and credited with coining the term "positioning" in the late 1960s
* Daniel Starch - developed the Starch score method of measuring print media effectiveness (still in use)
* J Walter Thompson
J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is ''jay'' (pronounced ), with a now-uncommon vari ...
- one of the earliest advertising agencies
See also
* Advertisements in schools
* Advertorial
An advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend (see portmanteau) of the words "advertisement" and "editorial." Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946.
In printed publications, t ...
* Annoyance factor
Annoyance is an unpleasant mental state that is characterized by irritation and distraction from one's conscious thinking. It can lead to emotions such as frustration and anger. The property of being easily annoyed is called irritability.
Ps ...
* Bibliography of advertising
This is a bibliography of advertising.
General
*Bhatia, Tej K. 2007. Advertising and marketing in rural India. Macmillan India.
* Bhatia, Tej K. 2000. ''Advertising in Rural India: Language, Marketing Communication, and Consumerism''. Institute f ...
* Branded content In marketing, branded content (also known as branded entertainment) is content produced by an advertiser or content whose creation was funded by an advertiser. In contrast to content marketing (in which content is presented first and foremost as a ...
* Commercial speech
In law, commercial speech is speech or writing on behalf of a business with the intent of earning revenue or a profit. It is economic in nature and usually attempts to persuade consumers to purchase the business's product or service. The Supreme ...
* Comparative advertising
Comparative advertising, or combative advertising, is an advertisement in which a particular product, or service, specifically mentions a competitor by name for the express purpose of showing why the competitor is inferior to the product naming it. ...
* Conquesting
Conquesting, as used in the advertising industry, is a means to deploy an advertisement for one's products or services adjacent to editorial content relating to the competitor or the competitor's products.
A common practice is to purchase adverti ...
* Copywriting
Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or ...
* Demo mode
The demo mode (short for "demonstration mode", also sometimes mentioned as floor mode or kiosk mode) is a feature often found in consumer electronics. A demo mode is usually programmed into the floor model's firmware, which may be accessed by the ...
* Direct-to-consumer advertising
Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) refers to the marketing and advertising of pharmaceutical products directly to consumers as patients, as opposed to specifically targeting health professionals. The term is synonymous primarily with the ad ...
* Family in advertising
Since the Industrial Revolution, use of the family in advertising has become a prominent practice in marketing campaigns to increase profits. Some sociologists say that these advertisements can influence behavior and attitudes; advertisers tend ...
* Graphic design
* Gross rating point In advertising, a gross rating point (GRP) measures impact. GRPs help answer ''how often'' "must someone see it before they can readily recall it" and "how many times" does it take before the desired outcome occurs.
Overview
Gross rating points are ...
* History of Advertising Trust
The History of Advertising Trust was established in 1976 to preserve and protect the heritage of UK advertising history and to offer it for research and study. It was registered as a UK charity (no. 276194) in 1978 and operates on a not-for-profit ...
* Informative advertising
Informative advertising is advertising that is carried out in a factual manner. This form of advertising relies solely on the goods or services strengths and features, rather than trying to convince customers to buy a product using emotion. The us ...
* Integrated marketing communications
Marketing Communications (MC, marcom(s), marcomm(s) or just simply communications) refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination.Tomse, & Snoj, 2014 Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate ...
* List of advertising awards
This list of advertising awards is an index to articles about notable awards given to the advertising industry. The list is organized by the home country of the sponsor, although most awards are not limited to one country. The list is restricted to ...
* Local advertising Local advertising is used in geomarketing to optimize ad delivery, this platform is applied to customers depending on their location. Making purchasing or service decisions is influenced by local marketing. Marketers and businesses consider local ad ...
* Market overhang Market overhang is a term derived from the physical world meaning things that stick out or hang over another thing. Often from the viewpoint of standing beneath an 'overhang' there is shade provided by a protrusion from the adjacent vertical domain, ...
* Media planning
Media planning is generally outsourced and entails sourcing and selecting optimal media platforms for a client's brand or product to use. The goal of media planning is to determine the best combination of media to achieve the clients objectives.
...
* Meta-advertising
Meta-advertising refers to a hybrid form of advertising, where the advertiser advertises for an advertisement. It can also be used for advertisements about ad agency, advertising agencies.
Advertisements about Advertisements
The most common defini ...
* Mobile marketing
Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile a ...
* Performance-based advertising
Performance-based advertising, also known as pay for performance advertising, is a form of advertising in which the purchaser pays only when there are measurable results. Performance-based advertising is becoming more common with the spread of e ...
* Promotional mix
In marketing, the promotional mix describes a blend of promotional variables chosen by marketers to help a firm reach its goals.Contemporary Marketing 2011 (textbook), Louis Boone, David Kurtz, Cengage Learning, Jan 1, 2010Elements of the promotion ...
* Senior media creative
* Shock advertising
* Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
* World Federation of Advertisers
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is a global association for multinational marketers and national advertiser associations. Its membership is made up of over 140 of the world's top brands and national associations in more than 60 markets. ...
References
Notes
Further reading
* Arens, William, and Michael Weigold. ''Contemporary Advertising: And Integrated Marketing Communications'' (2012)
* Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. ''Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective'' (10th ed. 2014)
* Biocca, Frank. ''Television and Political Advertising: Volume I: Psychological Processes'' (Routledge, 2013)
* Chandra, Ambarish, and Ulrich Kaiser. "Targeted advertising in magazine markets and the advent of the internet." ''Management Science'' 60.7 (2014) pp: 1829–1843.
* Chen, Yongmin, and Chuan He. "Paid placement: Advertising and search on the internet*." ''The Economic Journal'' 121#556 (2011): F309-F328
online
* Johnson-Cartee, Karen S., and Gary Copeland. ''Negative political advertising: Coming of age'' (2013)
* McAllister, Matthew P. and Emily West, eds. ''HardcoverThe Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture'' (2013)
* McFall, Elizabeth Rose ''Advertising: a cultural economy'' (2004), cultural and sociological approaches to advertising
* Moriarty, Sandra, and Nancy Mitchell. ''Advertising & IMC: Principles and Practice'' (10th ed. 2014)
* Okorie, Nelson. ''The Principles of Advertising: concepts and trends in advertising'' (2011)
* Reichert, Tom, and Jacqueline Lambiase, eds. ''Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the erotic appeal'' (Routledge, 2014)
* Sheehan, Kim Bartel. ''Controversies in contemporary advertising'' (Sage Publications, 2013)
* Vestergaard, Torben and Schrøder, Kim. ''The Language of Advertising.'' Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.
** Splendora, Anthony. "Discourse", a Review of Vestergaard and Schrøder, ''The Language of Advertising'' in ''Language in Society'' Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 445–449
History
* Brandt, Allan
''The Cigarette Century'' (2009)
* Crawford, Robert. ''But Wait, There's More!: A History of Australian Advertising, 1900–2000'' (2008)
* Ewen, Stuart. ''Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
* Fox, Stephen R. ''The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators'' (University of Illinois Press, 1984)
* Friedman, Walter A. ''Birth of a Salesman'' (Harvard University Press, 2005), In the United States
* Jacobson, Lisa. ''Raising consumers: Children and the American mass market in the early twentieth century'' (Columbia University Press, 2013)
* Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. ''Packaging the presidency: A history and criticism of presidential campaign advertising'' (Oxford University Press, 1996)
* Laird, Pamela Walker. ''Advertising progress: American business and the rise of consumer marketing'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.)
* Lears, Jackson. ''Fables of abundance: A cultural history of advertising in America'' (1995)
* Liguori, Maria Chiara. "North and South: Advertising Prosperity in the Italian Economic Boom Years." ''Advertising & Society Review'' (2015) 15#4
* Meyers, Cynthia B. ''A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio'' (2014)
* Mazzarella, William. ''Shoveling smoke: Advertising and globalization in contemporary India'' (Duke University Press, 2003)
* Moriarty, Sandra, et al. ''Advertising: Principles and practice'' (Pearson Australia, 2014), Australian perspectives
* Nevett, Terence R. ''Advertising in Britain: a history'' (1982)
* Oram, Hugh. ''The advertising book: The history of advertising in Ireland'' (MOL Books, 1986)
* Presbrey, Frank. "The history and development of advertising." ''Advertising & Society Review'' (2000) 1#
online
* Saunders, Thomas J. "Selling under the Swastika: Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany." ''German History'' (2014): ghu058.
* Short, John Phillip. "Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany." ''Enterprise and Society'' (2014): khu013.
* Sivulka, Juliann. ''Soap, sex, and cigarettes: A cultural history of American advertising'' (Cengage Learning, 2011)
* Spring, Dawn. "The Globalization of American Advertising and Brand Management: A Brief History of the J. Walter Thompson Company, Proctor and Gamble, and US Foreign Policy." ''Global Studies Journal'' (2013). 5#4
* Stephenson, Harry Edward, and Carlton McNaught. ''The Story of Advertising in Canada: A Chronicle of Fifty Years'' (Ryerson Press, 1940)
* Tungate, Mark. ''Adland: a global history of advertising'' (Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.)
* West, Darrell M. ''Air Wars: Television Advertising and Social Media in Election Campaigns, 1952–2012'' (Sage, 2013)
External links
Advertising Educational Foundation
archived advertising exhibits and classroom resources
** Duke University Libraries Digital Collections:
**
Ad*Access
over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements, dated 1911–1955, includes World War II propaganda.
**
Emergence of Advertising in America
9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1940, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.
**
AdViews
vintage television commercials
**
ROAD 2.0
30,000 outdoor advertising images
**
Medicine & Madison Avenue
documents advertising of medical and pharmaceutical products
* ''Art & Copy
''Art & Copy'' is a 2009 documentary film, directed by Doug Pray, about the advertising industry in the U.S. The film follows the careers of advertisers, including Hal Riney, George Lois, Mary Wells Lawrence, Dan Wieden, and Lee Clow. The documen ...
'', a 2009 documentary film about the advertising industry
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Articles containing video clips
Communication design
Promotion and marketing communications
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