A look into the history of American

Advertising

By: Robert Scarano

An Introduction to
Advertising
 Advertising - the act or practice of calling
public attention to one's product, service,
need, etc., esp. by paid announcements in
newspapers and magazines, over radio or
television, on billboards, etc.: to get more
customers by advertising.
 Advertising spending worldwide exceeds
$350 billion per year.
 About 6,000 advertising agencies in the U.S
 Organization of the
Industry
 2006 - There were about 48,000 advertising
and public relations services establishments
in the United States.
 Advertising firms specialize in a particular
market niche.
 Some deal with outdoor advertising, others will
deal with advertising on busses, subways,
trains.
 Some firms are do not create the campaign.
They sell advertising time or space on radio or
television stations or publications. Because
these firms do not produce advertising, their
staffs are mostly sales workers.
○ This is what WLBZ 2 Bangor which I reference later
on in these presentation does.
○ California and New York together account for about
 Employment
68 percent of all advertising and public
relations establishments employ fewer than 5
employees

Due to the small size of firms, it is easier

for small agencies to start up. Many
operations will begin as 1 or 2 person
operations.

The average age in the industry is

between 25 and 54, with nobody
below 20. This shows the
necessary postsecondary training
or experience that one needs to
succeed.
Occupations in
Advertising
Management and professional and related
occupations
Represents agency to the client
Responsible for quality of advertisement or
campaign
Analyze competitive activity
Occupations in
Advertising
Sales
Gather information on the public’s viewing and
reading habits
 Base their ads on these
Calculates the numbers and types of people
reached by different media, and how often they
are reached
Track the media space and times available for
purchase
Office and administrative support
occupations
Accounted for 27 percent of jobs in
2006
 Advertising
Table 1. Employment of wage and salary workers in advertising and public relations
services by occupation, 2006 and projected change, 2006-2016.
(Employment in thousands)
Advertising
Important Events in Advertising History
1704: The first newspaper
advertisement, an
announcement seeking a buyer
for an Oyster Bay, Long Island,
estate, is published in the
Boston News-Letter.

1729: Benjamin Franklin begins

publishing the Pennsylvania
Gazette in Philadelphia, which
includes pages of "new
advertisements.” Benjamin
Franklin was the first to use this
advertising style.
1742: Benjamin Franklin's
General Magazine prints the first
American magazine ads.

1843: Volney Palmer opens the

first advertising agency in
Philadelphia.

Volney Palmer
1873: The first convention of
advertising agents is held in New
York.
1880: Department store founder
John Wanamaker is the first
retailer to hire a full-time
advertising copywriter, John E.
Powers.
1882: Procter & Gamble Co.
begins advertising Ivory soap
with an unprecedented budget
of $11,000.
1883:Cyrus H.K. Curtis launches
Cyrus H.K Curtis
Ladies' Home Journal with his
1887: The American Newspaper Publishers
Association is formed.
1892: Ladies' Home Journal bans patent-
medicine advertising.
Asa Briggs Chandler registers Coca-Cola as
a trademark.
1893: Frank Munsey drops the price of
Munsey's Magazine to 10¢ and the cost of
subscriptions to $1, marking the first
attempt at keeping a magazine afloat by
advertising revenue rather than newsstand
sales.
1893: George P. Rowell of Boston founds
Printer's Ink, a magazine that serves as the
"little schoolmaster in the art of
advertising.”
1899: The Association of American
1900: N.W. Ayer establishes a Business-
Getting Department to plan advertising
campaigns based on prospective advertisers'
marketing needs.
1904: The Associated Advertising Clubs of
America, a group of agencies, advertisers and
media representatives, is formed.
1906: Congress passes the Pure Food & Drug
Act, forcing product labels to list the active
ingredients.
The Federal Trade Commission Act is passed,
and Joseph E. Davies is named the first FTC
chairman. Section 5 allows it to issue cease-
and-desist orders against dishonest
advertising.
1920: KDKA, Pittsburgh, becomes the first
radio station in the U.S. and is the first to
broadcast the results of the 1920
presidential election.
1922: AT&T's station WEAF in New York
offers 10 minutes of radio time to anyone
who would pay $100. The Queensboro
Corp., a Long Island real estate firm, buys
the first commercials in advertising
historyófour: 15 spots at $50 apiece.
Following the ads extolling Hawthorne
Court, a new tenant-owned apartment
complex in Jackson Heights, sales total
thousands of dollars.
1923: National Carbon Co.'s "Eveready Hour"
is the first regular series of broadcast
entertainment and music to be sponsored by
an advertiser.
1924: Goodrich Tires sponsors the first hour
long show over a network of nine radio
stations.
1925: The National Better Business Bureau is
organized.
1926: Radio Corp. of America buys New York
radio station WEAF from AT&T and renames it
WNBC. It forms the first radio network with 19
stations within the year, and the National
Broadcasting Co. is launched.
1927: The Federal Radio Commission is
established.
1929: American Tobacco Co. spends $12.3
million to advertise Lucky Strikes, the most
any company has ever spent on single-product
advertising.
1930: Advertising Age is launched in
Chicago.
1936: Life publishes its first edition. It later
becomes the first magazine to carry $100
million annually in advertising.
1938: Radio surpasses magazines as a
source of advertising revenue.
1939: NBC experiments with a telecast of
TV's first baseball game, Princeton vs.
Columbia.
The War Advertising Council is organized
to help prepare voluntary advertising
campaigns for wartime efforts. The council
garners $350 million in free public service
messages. After the war it is renamed the Ad Council

Advertising Council.
 1952: The FCC lifts its ban on new TV stations after
problems of signal interference are worked out.
 1953: The Advertising Research Foundation is established.
 1955: The Marlboro Man campaign debuts.
 1956: Videotape recording makes prerecorded
commercials possible.
 1957: In what would be one of the great marketing
disasters of automotive history, Ford Motor Co. introduces
the Edsel.
 1958: The National Association of Broadcasters bans
subliminal ads.
 1960: Doyle Dane Bernbach introduces the "creative
team" approach of combining a copywriter with an art
director to create its "Think small" campaign for
Volkswagen.
1963: "The Pepsi Generation" kicks off the
cola wars.
1964: After the U.S. surgeon general
determines that smoking is "hazardous to
your health," The New Yorker and other
magazines ban cigarette ads.
1967: Wells, Rich, Greene is established.
Mary Wells is the first woman to head a
major agency.
1971: Congress prohibits broadcast
advertising of cigarettes.
1976: The Supreme Court grants
advertising First Amendment protection.
 1980: Congress removes the FTC's power to stop
"unfair" advertising.
 1981: MTV debuts with frenetic video images that
change the nature of commercials.
 1986: Needham Harper Worldwide, BBDO
International and Doyle Dane Bernbach merge to
create Omnicom Group, the largest advertising
company in the world.
 1993: The Internet becomes a reality as 5 million
users worldwide get online.
 1993: Philip Morris announced plans to cut the price
of its flagship Marlboro brand and heavy up on
promotional outlays. The move, coined "Marlboro
Friday," plunged Philip Morris' shares 23% and
reverberated to other package goods stocks.
 1998: Cigarette makers and state attorneys general
draft a $206 billion deal that curbs marketing and
settles lawsuits to recover Medicaid costs.
 1999: Internet advertising breaks the $2 billion mark
and heads toward $3 billion as the industry, under
Forms of Advertising
Something promoting the sale of a service or
a good is a typical advertisement.
Public Service Announcements (PSA) – are
used to shape an idea or influence. Above the
influence ads are examples of PSAs.
Institutional Advertising - Promote an
institution, such as the Red Cross or the
United States Marines. Their purpose is to
encourage people to volunteer or donate
money.
Political Advertising – Advertising has become
the basis of many political campaigns.
 Mediums of Advertising:

The average American is bombarded with 5,000

advertisements in one day. There are several different
types of advertising. Each type is unique in it’s own way.
Each form reaches out to it’s desired audience in a different
way. Over the years, advertising has become more direct
and more targeted with the use of the internet.
More detailed
information regarding
each medium can be
found on the advertising
timeline found earlier in
the presentation.
ewspapers
 The first form of advertising

 Advantages – short lead time, flexible, reach

large audience, community prestige, intense
coverage, reader control of exposure,
coordination with national advertising,
merchandising service, segment consumer
by geography.

 Disadvantages -- short life span, may be

expensive relative to other media, hasty
 Radio
Advantages – audio capacity, short lead time,
low cost relative to other media, reach
demographic and geographic segmented
audience, reach large audience.

Disadvantages – doesn't have visual capacity,

fragmented and inflexible, temporary nature
of message.
Magazines and Journals
Advantages - selectivity for demographic and
geographic segments, high in quality
reproduction, lasts as long as magazine is
kept, issue may be read by more than one
person.

Disadvantages – long lead time, lack of

flexibility in gaining attention, often limited
control over location of advertisement.
Outdoor Advertising
Advantages – inexpensive relative to other
media, quick communication of simple ideas,
repetition of exposure to customers, ability to
promote products available for sale nearby.

Disadvantages - brevity of the message, short

exposure time, cannot target customer, public
concern over esthetics.
Television
Advantages - impact mass coverage,
repetition, flexibility in getting attention of
consumer, prestige, visual and audio
capabilities, short lead time.

Disadvantages -temporary nature of

message, high cost relative to other media,
high mortality rate for commercials,
evidence of public distrust, lack of
selectivity, hard to target customer,
requires production specialists.
 Direct Mail
Advantages – flexibility in reaching target
audience, short lead time, intense coverage,
flexibility of format, complete information,
easy to personalize.
Disadvantages -- high cost per person,
dependency on quality of mailing list,
consumer resistance, may be considered as
junk mail, may be difficult and expensive to
access mailing lists.
Internet
In the early 1990s, the internet became a
reality. The internet became the quickest
growing medium for advertising as it is
extremely powerful. With the use of new
internet technologies, internet advertising
has become very precise and taken many
different forms. I will examine the different
forms of internet advertising. Just as other
mediums, each method tries to reach its
desired audience in it’s own way.
 Page Takeover
Advertising
These ads are just what they sound like. Ads
that take over the entire page you are on. The
only way to return to what you are viewing is
to manually close the ad. Myspace was one of
the first large advertisers to us these types of
ads. These ads make you pay attention to
them.
Audible Advertising
These advertisements are some of the most
annoying, but certainly get your attention.
Everyone has been browsing a website when
they hear, “you have just won a free iPod,”
coming from their speakers. These ads try and
make it very tempting for the listener.
 Animated Flash
Advertising
These ads make the most revenue for
advertisers. These ads will come up and
dance around the screen, often times making
them difficult to close. They also use cool
looking graphics and sounds to try and get the
viewer to click them.
Interview with Bud
Cushman
On the next slide is an interview that I had
with Bud Cushman, director of advertising
sales for WLBZ 2 CBS Bangor. The interview
gives an overview of the advertising field and
what Bud’s job entails.
The average American is bombarded with up to 5,000 advertisements a day, compared to 500 back in the 1970s. Bud
Cushman, director of advertising sales for WLBZ 2 CBS offers some insight into the complex world of advertising.
Cushman’s job has many aspects to it and he carries many responsibilities on his shoulders.

He studied broadcast journalism at the University of Maine. He has always been involved with sales throughout his life
and fell into this field by accident and has been doing it ever since. He calls the field “interesting;” neither he nor any
of his top sales staff hold degrees in advertising. Cushman says to succeed in the field one must be very multi-faceted.
They must possess skills in many areas such as writing, reading, editing, must be able to work with numbers, and
handle many critical tasks. Something he says his staff is very capable of.

Cushman said that he “doesn’t sell TV commercials, he sells what his clients sell.” His job is to raise awareness about
his clients’ products and “push customers through the door,” not to sell them the product. An important aspect of
Cushman’s job is raising top of mind awareness. The act of having a certain company or brand pop into your head first,
being right there at the top. This is critical; it is what drives a potential customer to a certain company. It’s like asking
where you want to grab some fast food. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, or some other fast food company
would pop into your head. The reason it does is because of top of mind awareness, something that every company
strives for.

The advertising industry will see some changes in the near future. Cushman says that his department will be directly
affected by the current economic situation. Some clients that would sign on with a one-year contract are now only
signing on for six months. Many of his clients have recently been cutting back the length of their contracts due to the
high level of recent economic uncertainty.

Just as many things in life, you get what you pay. Good advertising costs good money; a statement that Cushman
agreed with. If a tractor company came to Cushman looking to advertise, he would place their ad in with football
games in the hopes of reaching the most interested audience. This type of advertising is not cheap, but it will provide
the best possible results. Cushman also mentioned run of station advertising, these ads are purchased in a large
quantity for a low price. The problem with these ads is their uncertainty, the station can give no guarantee as to when
these ads will air, and they will be used to fill open space at any random time.

With the quickly changing technology, advertising has found a form in every medium, especially on the Internet.
Cushman states that TV is still the most cost effective way to advertise, but more broad, while the web is more
targeted. On TV a large variety of people are reached, some interested, some not. On the Internet, we can target
people via keywords; the results are a more qualified audience with some knowledge of the subject. The term news
reporter is no longer used; multimedia journalist has replaced it. Journalists of today no longer prepare a story or ad
Works Cited
Advertising Age/Crain Communications Inc. "The
Advertising Age Timeline." The Advertising Age
Timeline. 2 Dec. 2008
<http://adage.com/century/timeline/index.html>.
Microsoft Corporation, comp. "Advertising."
Advertising. MSN Encarta. 14 Nov. 2008
<http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564279/
advertising.html>.
Manohar, Uttara. "Different Types of Advertising."
Different Types of Advertising. 10 Apr. 2008. 2 Dec.
2008 <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/different-
types-of-advertising.html>.
"Advertising and Public Relations Services." Career
Guide to Industries. 18 Dec. 2007. Bureau of Labor
Statistics. 1 Dec. 2008
<http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs030.htm>.