History of Advertising.

Advertisements - A notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy, usually paid for in the form of media text.

The first form of advertising were posters advertising an event, for example the first potters date back to gladiatorial contests in Ancient Rome. However the first advertisements that fit today’s definition appeared in newspapers, in the seventeenth century. They usually were statements of fact without any illustrations or fancy fonts and they were hardly distinguishable from the news stories.

In the eighteenth century, after the Industrial revolution, as the consumer good became more sophisticated, manufacturers started to recognise the need of building awareness of their product/service as many items were new to the consumers.

In the nineteenth century the form of adverts became more or less as we know it today, as they have stated to have mixture of images and text. With the proliferation of goods and services in the nineteenth century, businesses started to realise the importance of advertising and it should be dealt with by experts in the field.

In the early twentieth century, the government started to recognise the power that advertising has in delivering the message to the public. This is when advertisement was used to enlist solider end enforce government policies, during the First World War, and looking back at them now we refer to them as propaganda. Many of these adverts use deliberate psychological manipulation, which today we see as crude and unfair. Propaganda posters created very specific power relationship between the audience and advertiser, and by looking at the posters we can tell that the advertiser knows best and are giving the audience the information for their own good. Our, modern audience, has more sophisticated approach to advertising and is much more sensitive to any attitudes which might be considerate as patronising.

Advertising became a well-established industry in 1914 and it continued to expand after the First World War. Psychology was also developing and growing as a science and many advertisers were quick to react to the relationship between psychology and advertising, therefore they have used psychology in order to reach their audience. During this time the ways to reach your audience have expanded as technology has developed and advertisers were able to advertise their product at the cinema or on the radio.

In the 1920s radio was the most popular way to advertise a product/service and between 1923 and 1930 60% of American families acquired a radio set. The term “soap opera” came into being as soap manufacturers sponsored domestic radio dramas in return for frequent plugs for their product.

Advertising by television became popular after the Second World War, as the consumer spending has increased. Millions of dollars were “poured” into advertising agencies by manufacturers as they were in need to inform consumers about the new available products (such as washing machines, TV sets and food mixers), that were unavailable for them before. The combination of the image and the sound started to build up brand recognition, as well as it was able to reach wider audience and soon the television was full of programmes such as Colgate Comedy Hour and Coke Time. This is sometimes referred to as single sponsor era, as TV programmes were made by advertising agencies and paid for by single sponsor.

In the 1950s people behind the advertisements (mainly man) became media stars and were featured on the magazines and were considered to have a great power as well as being seen as super highly paid.

In the 1960s the networks wanted more control over the content and as television became more sophisticated and production costs rose, single sponsors began to struggle. NBC executive Sylvester Weaver came up with the idea of selling separate small blocks of broadcasting time, rather than whole show. Therefore several different advertisers were able to buy time during one show and the content of the show would move out of the control of a single advertiser. This became known as participation advertising, as it allowed a whole variety of advertisers to access the audience of a single TV show, which is now known as a “commercial break”

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