advertising

Any of various methods used by a company to increase the sales of its products or services or to promote a brand name. Advertising is also used by organizations and individuals to communicate an idea or image, to recruit staff, to publicize an event, or to locate an item or commodity.

Product advertising can be seen by economists as either beneficial (since it provides information about a product and so brings the market closer to a state of perfect competition) or as a hindrance to perfect competition, since it attempts to make imaginary distinctions (such as greater sex appeal) between more or less similar products. Specialized advertising agencies often handle the advertising of a company's products, services, or corporate brand, although some aspects may be dealt with within the company (in-house). There are two basic types of advertising, informative advertising and persuasive advertising. The effectiveness of advertising is notoriously hard to measure. Marketing departments, who often take responsibility for a company's advertising budget, can try to measure the success of their company's advertising using market research.

Advertisers use a variety of media such as newspapers and magazines, television and radio, direct mail, the Internet, and posters. In newspapers and magazines, classified advertisements are small advertisements of only a few lines of print, almost always without any illustration. They are often used by individuals or small companies. Display advertisements are larger advertisements, usually in boxes, which often carry a mixture of pictures and words. Larger companies often employ advertising agencies to devise an advertising campaign. The agency will usually undertake market research in preparation for the design of the advertisements to be used in the campaign. It will then book space on television, in newspapers, and so on for the advertisements.

Not all advertisements are aimed at all people. To ensure that their advertisements will appeal to those most suited to their product, advertisers ensure that they have a target audience in mind when they design their campaign. People have been generally divided into one of six target audiences, labelled A, B, C1, C2, D, and E, which range from wealthy professionals to students, the retired, and the unemployed. This means that an advertiser can tailor its appeal according to the socio-economic background of its target audience.