Advertisement, the process of obtaining and particularly of purchasing publicity. The business of advertising is of very recent origin if it be regarded as a serious adjunct to other phases of commercial activity. In some rudimentary form the seller’s appeal to the buyer must, however, have accompanied the earliest development of trade. Under conditions of primitive barter, communities were so small that every producer was in immediate personal contact with every consumer. As the primeval man’s wolfish antipathy to the stranger of another pack gradually diminished, and as intercourse spread the infection of larger desires, the trapper could no longer satisfy his more complicated wants by the mere exchange of his pelts for his lowland neighbor’s corn and oil. A began to accept from B the commodity which he could in turn deliver to C, while C in exchange for B’s product gave to A what D had produced and bartered to C. The mere statement of such a transaction sufficiently presents its clumsiness, and the use of primitive forms of coin soon simplified the original process of bare barter. It is reasonable to suppose that as soon as the introduction of currency marked the abandonment of direct relations between purchaser and consumer an informal system of advertisement in turn rose to meet the need of publicity. At first the offer of the producer must have been brought to the trader’s attention, and the trader’s offer to the notice of the consumer, by casual personal contact, supplemented by local rumour. The gradual growth of markets and their development into periodical fairs, to which merchants from distant places resorted, afforded, until printing was invented, the only means of extended advertisement. In England, during the 3rd century, Stourbridge Fair attracted traders from abroad as well as from all parts of England, and it may be conjectured that the crying of wares before the booths on the banks of the Stour ADVERTISEMENT was the first form of advertisement which had any marked effect upon English commerce. As the fairs of the middle ages, with the tedious and hazardous journeys they involved, gradually gave place to a more convenient system of trade, the i5th century brought the invention of printing, and led the way to the modern development of advertising. The Americans, to whom the elaboration of newspaper advertising is primarily due, had but just founded the first English-speaking community in the western hemisphere when the first newspaper was published in England. But although the first periodical publication containing news appeared in the month of May 1622, the first newspaper advertisement does not seem to have been published until April 1647. It formed a part of No. 13 of Perfect Occurrences of Every Daie journall in Parliament, and other Moderate Intelligence, and it read as follows:
A Book applauded by the Clergy of England, called The Divine Right of Church Government, Collected by sundry eminent Ministers in the Citie of London’, Corrected and augmented in many places, with a briefe Reply to certain Queries against the Mimstery of England; Is printed and published for Joseph Hunscot and George Calvert, and are to be sold at the Stationers’ Hall, and at the Golden Fleece in the Old Change.
Among the Mercuries,us the weekly newspapers of the day were called, was the Mercurius Elencticus, and in its 45th number, published on the 4th of October 1648, there appeared the following advertisement:
The Reader is desired to peruse a Sermon, Entituled A Looking-Glasse for Levellers, Preached at St. Peters, Paules Wharf, on Sunday, Sept. 24th 1648, by Paul Knell, Mr. of Arts. Another Tract called A Reflex upon our Reformers, with a prayer for the Parliament.
In an issue of the Mercurius Politicus, published by Marchmont Nedham, who is described as ” perhaps both the ablest and the readiest man that had yet tried his hand at a newspaper,” there appeared in January 1652 an advertisement, which has often been erroneously cited as the first among newspaperadvertisements. It read as follows:
Irenodia Gratulatoria, a heroic poem, being a congratulatory panegyrick for my Lord General’s return, summing up his successes in an exquisite manner. To be sold by John Holden, in the New Exchange, London, Printed by Thomas Newcourt, 1652.
The article ” On the Advertising System,” published in the Edinburgh Review for February 1843, contains the fullest account of early English advertising that has ever been given, and it has been very freely drawn upon by all writers who have since discussed the subject. But it describes this advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus as ” the very first,” and the discovery of the two earlier instances above quoted was due to the researches of a contributor to Notes and Queries.
In The Crosby Records, the commonplace-books of William Blundell, there is an interesting comment, dated 1659, on the lack of advertising facilities at that period It would be very expedient if each parish or village might have some place, as the church or smithy, wherein to publish (by papers posted up) the wants either of the buyer or the seller, as such a field to be let, such a servant, or such a service, to be had, &c. There was a book published in London weekly about the year 1657 which was called (as I remember) The Publick Advice. It gave information in very many of these particulars.
A year later the same diarist says There is an office near the Old Exchange in London called the office of Publick Advice. From thence both printed and private information of this useful nature are always to be had. But what they print is no more than a leaf or less in a diurnal. I was in this office. The diurnal consisted of sixteen pages quarto in 1689.
In No. 62 of the London Gazette, published in June 1666, the first advertisement supplement was announced An AdvertisementBeing daily prest to the Publication of Books, Medicines, and other things not properly the business of a Paper of Intelligence, This is to notifie, once for all, that we will not charge the Gazette with Advertisements, unless they be matter of State: but that a Paper of Advertisements will be forthwith printed apart, & recommended to the Publick by another hand.
In No. 94 of the same journal, published in October 1666, there appeared a suggestion that sufferers from the Great Fire should avail themselves of this means of publicity Such as have settled in new habitations since the late Fire, and desire for the convenience of their correspondence to publish the place of their present abode, or to give notice of Goods lost or found may repair to the corner House in Bloomsbury on the East Side of the Great Square, before the House of the Right Honorable the Lord Treasurer, where there is care taken for the Receipt and Publication of such Advertisements.
The earlier advertisements, with the exception of formal notices, seem to have been concerned exclusively with either books or quack remedies. The first trade advertisement, which does not fall within either of these categories, was curiously enough the first advertisement of a new commodity, tea. The following advertisement appeared in the Mercurius Polilicus, No. 435, for September 1658
That excellent and by all Physitians approved China Drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay, alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head, a cophee-house in Sweetings Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London. . . , .
The history of slavery, of privateering and of many other curious incidents and episodes of English history during the ryth and i8th centuries might be traced by examination of the antiquated advertisements which writers upon such subjects have already collected. In order that space may be found for some consideration of the practical aspects of modern advertising, the discussion of its gradual development must be curtailed. Nor is it necessary to preface this consideration by any labored statement of the importance which advertising has assumed.
It is a matter of common knowledge that several business houses are to be found in Great Britain, and a larger number in the United States, who spend not less than 50,000 a year in advertising, while one patent medicine company, operating both in England and the United States, has probably spent not less than 200,000 in Great Britain in one year, and an English cocoa manufacturer is supposed to have spent 150,000 in Great Britain. Some of the best works of artists as distinguished as Sir John Millais, Sir H. von Herkomer and Mr Stacy Marks have been scattered broadcast by advertisers. The purchase of Sir John Millais’ picture ” Bubbles ” for 220×3 by the proprietors of a well-known brand of soap is probably the most remarkable instance of the expenditure in this direction which an advertiser may find profitable. There are in London alone more than 350 advertising agents, of whom upwards of a hundred are known as men in a considerable way of business. The statements which from time to time find currency in the newspapers with regard to the total amount of money annually spent upon advertising in Great Britain and in the United States are necessarily no better than conjectures, but no detailed statistics are required in order to demonstrate what every reader can plainly see for himself, that advertising has definitely assumed its position as a serious field of commercial enterprise.
Advertising, as practised at the beginning of the aoth century, may be divided into three general classes:
1. Advertising in periodical publications.
2. Advertising by posters, signboards (other than those placed upon premises where the advertised business is conducted), transparencies and similar devices.
3. Circulars, sent in quantities to specific classes of persons to whom the advertiser specially desired to address himself.
It may be noted at the outset that advertising in periodical publications exercises a reflex influence upon these publications. The daily, weekly and monthly publications of the day are accustomed to look to advertisements for so large a part of their revenue that the purchaser of a periodical publication receives much greater value for his money than he could reasonably expect from the publisher if the aggregate advertising receipts did not constitute a perpetual subsidy to the publisher. It is not to be supposed, however, that the receipts from the sale of a paper cover all its expenses and that the advertising revenue is all clear profit. The average newspaper reader would be amazed if he knew at how great a cost the day’s news is laid before him. A dignified journal displays no inclination to cry from the housetops the vastness of its expenditure, but from time to time an accident enables the public to obtain information in this connection. The evidence taken by a recent Copyright Commission disclosed that the expenditure of the leading English journal upon foreign news alone amounted to more than 50,000 in the course of one year, and that a year not characterized by any great war to swell the ordinary volume of cable despatches.
In the case of daily papers sold at the minimum price, it is not less obvious that the costliness of news service renders advertising revenue indispensable, for although these less important journals spend less money, the price at which they are supplied to the news agents is very small in proportion to the cost of their production. If, however, this thought be pursued to its logical conclusion, the advertiser must admit that he in turn receives, from those among newspaper readers who purchase his wares, prices sufficiently high to cover the cost of his advertising. So that the reader is in the curious position of directly paying a certain price for his newspaper, receiving a newspaper fairly worth more than that price, while this price is supplemented by the indirect incidence of a sort of tax upon many of the commodities he consumes. On the other hand, a great part of the advertisements in a daily newspaper have themselves an interest and utility not less than that possessed by the news. The man who desires to hire a house turns to the classified lists which the newspaper publishes day after day, and servants and employers find one another by the same means. The theatrical announcements are so much a part of the news that even if a journal were not paid for their insertion they could not be altogether omitted without inconvenience to the reader. In the main, however, it is the advertiser who seeks the reader, not the reader who seeks the advertiser, and the care with which advertisements are prepared, and the certainty with which the success or failure of a trader may be traced to his skill or want of skill as an advertiser, show that the proper use of advertising is one of the most indispensable branches of commercial training.
Before discussing in detail the methods of advertising in periodical publications it may be well to complete, for the use Poster of the general reader, a brief survey of the whole and sign subject by examining the two other classes of advertise-ment- The most enthusiastic partisan of advertising will admit that posters and similar devices are very generally regarded by the public as sources of annoyance. A bold headline or a conspicuous illustration in a newspaper advertisement may for a moment force itself upon the reader’s attention. In the French, and in some English newspapers, where an advertisement is often given the form of an item of news, the reader is distressed by the constant fear of being hoodwinked. He begins to read an account of a street accident, and finds at the end of the paragraph a puff of a panacea for bruises. The best English and American journals have refused to lend themselves to this sort of trickery, and in no one of the best journals printed in the English language will there be found.
