This document summarizes the history of advertising in the United States from the late 19th century to the present. It describes how advertising evolved from simple announcements in colonial newspapers to the widespread national advertising of branded goods in the 1880s. The rise of mass media like magazines, radio, and television in the 1920s provided new platforms for reaching large audiences. More recently, advertising has focused on market segmentation and targeting distinct demographic groups. Throughout its history, advertising has typically depicted an idealized version of society rather than reflecting social realities.

1. Advertising History of USA A change from late 19th century to 20thCentury

3. Advertisements in colonial America were most frequently announcements of goods on hand, but even in this early period, persuasive appeals accompanied dry descriptions.

4. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century advertisements were not only for consumer goods. A particularly disturbing form of early American advertisements were notices of slave sales or appeals for the capture of escaped slaves.

5. Newspapers almost never printed ads wider than a single column and generally eschewed illustrations and even special typefaces.

6. Magazine ad styles were also restrained, with most publications segregating advertisements on the back pages.

8. By one commonly used measure, total advertising volume in the United States grew from about $200 million in 1880to nearly$3 billion in 1920.

9. While advertising generated modern anxieties about its social and ethical implications, it nevertheless acquired a new centrality in the 1920s.

10. The rise of mass circulation magazines, radio broadcasting and to a lesser extent motion pictures provided new media for advertisements to reach consumers.

12. This add came up in the 1920 to persuade readers to switch brands. It indicates that a new brand has come to market; EVE filter cigarettes, with pretty filter tip, pretty pack. The add usually targets the feminine group.

13. This ad appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine, a magazine for children, in 1900. After decades when cameras were bulky, complicated, and hardly portable, the Eastman Kodak Company had to convince late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century consumers that its new cameras were portable and easy to use. Kodak succeeded in transforming photography into an activity for amateurs at home and on vacation rather than solely for professionals in studios. This ad for the Brownie camera takes that pitch a step further, trying to convince consumers that cameras were appropriate even for children.

14. Intended Audience In the first half of the twentieth century, most national advertising portrayed and promoted a world of mass produced, standardized products. Advertising and mass consumption would erase social differences. In more recent decades, however, marketing’s emphasis has been on segmentation—fitting a product and its marketing strategy to the interests and needs of a distinct subgroup. If segmentation is the norm in advertising, then it is crucial to ask for whom an advertisement or a campaign is intended.

15. This add is targeting the feminine group; specially wives. It targets those wives who want to make their husband happy with a gift in his birthday or in their anniversary, and persuades it is the perfect present..

16. What Do ADDs Reveal? In examining ads as historical documents, we also should look at what the ad seems to take for granted. Notably, historical and contemporary studies abound showing that advertising’s depiction of American society has been highly skewed in its portrayal of race, class, and gender. Until a generation ago, African Americans and other people of colour were virtually invisible in mainstream advertising, except when they were portrayed as servants or as exemplifying racially stereotyped behaviour. Images of women in advertising have hardly been uniform, but several themes recur: the housewife ecstatic over a new cleaning product; the anxious woman fearing the loss of youthful attractiveness; the subservient spouse dependent on her assertive husband; the object of men’s sexual gaze and desire. Advertising also gives false testimony about the actual class structure of American society. Advertising images consistently show scenes of prosperity, material comfort, even luxury well beyond the conditions of life of most Americans.

17. This add from 1943 reveals that the women at that time were still concerned about their beauty and looked for cosmetic products which would make them look beautiful, even in the striving, materialistic climate of the World War II bloom while their husbands were sacrificing lives for the country.

18. Internet Adds The Web has opened up myriad possibilities for the historical study of advertising. Specialized Web collections—ranging from notices for escaped slaves to celebrations of recent advertising campaigns—supplement the general sites. Old advertisements formerly available only in research libraries or in “coffee table” books are now accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

19. Some Links http://www.adflip.comAdflip is a privately financed archive of more than 6,000 print advertisements published from 1940 to the present. Products advertised, including everything from dog food to DeSotos, are divided into 17 search categories, from automotive to travel, and eight themed categories such as comic books and obsolete products. For each ad, the site tells when and where it appeared. This collection includes advertisements from 65 magazines and comic books, from Archie to Wired. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/Contains more than 9,000 advertising items and publications from 1850 to 1920. Selected items illustrate the rise of consumer culture in America from the mid-nineteenth century and the development of a professional advertising industry. http://www.pmadarchive.com/More than 55,000 colour images of tobacco advertisements, dating back to 1909. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/colahome.html Highlights of Coca-Cola television advertisements, including 50 commercials, broadcast outtakes, and “experimental footage reflecting the historical development of television advertising for a major commercial product.”

20. Advertisement prefers to picture the world that consumers aspire to, not the one they actually inhabit.

21. Advertising, in Michael Schudson’s phrase, is “capitalist realism,” an art form that abstracts from and reconfigures the world as it is to fit the marketing needs of the business system.

22. E n d