Technology in Advertising

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Technology in Advertising

Over 10 years ago, Stan Rapp and Tom Collins, international marketing consultants, stated that the average American is "bombarded by five-thousand advertising messages per day…" (Caution, pp. 6). This number has more than likely tripled due to our technology enhanced society. In the beginning there were criers or hawkers; nowadays there are pop-ads and email spam. Technology has had a key impact on advertising. This paper will illustrate how "major" advertising first started and how it has progressed to where it is now.

Major advertising is advertising with the ability to reach great numbers of people. The printing press is the foundation for what is now known as major advertising. The first printing press was created in the 16th century and as it stretched across Europe, so did literacy. Publishers began to print newsbooks (booklets or pamphlets that contained news). These newsbooks contained ads called "advices", a term that stemmed from the Offices of Publick Advice in London. Some of the most common advices were designed to sell land, books, or some type of health "cure". The first regularly published newspaper in America was the Boston News Letter. Created by postmaster John Campbell, on April 17, 1704, the first issue invited readers to advertise in the paper for a small fee. [An advertisement for advertising…] Twenty-five years later, Benjamin Franklin began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was the first to add small attention-grabbing pictures to the ads in his paper, making it easy for the readers to see what was being advertised: a boat, a new pair of shoes, or, later, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Fireplace.

"By 1830 nearly a thousand newspapers were being published in cities a...

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...y website and you’ll come across an advertisement.

"All day long, advertisements come your way—from a message on a matchbox or even a doormat to a gigantic sign on a blimp or a banner trailing behind a plane high above you. An hour-long radio broadcast can include up to forty commercials, and the typical American sees over 250,000 television commercials by the time he or she leaves high school. (Some researchers say the number of TV commercials viewed can be as high as 50,000 per year.) And if you read through an entire Sunday edition of The New York Times, you could be subjected to up to 350 pages of ads" (Caution, pp. 6).

Advertisements are here to stay. With technology continuing on to greater and bigger things, so will how ads are advertised. From criers to newspapers, from radio to television, and on to the internet, advertisements have come a long way.

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