The psychology of advertising has been a subject of incessant study, and it has been accepted that at least four ele ments are essential to every effective ad vertisement. It must (1) attract at tention. Hence the value of clever slogans and attractive headlines. It must (2) arouse interest. This is done by a clear, simple, not too long statement of the merits of the article in question. It must (3) create desire. This is done by showing how the acquisition of this article will benefit the reader personally. And it must (4) inspire decision on the part of the person addressed to make that article his own. There are infinite variations, but an advertisement that lacks any one of these four elements is practically worthless.
Advertising has reached its highest de velopment in the United States where it has become a recognized element of nearly every large business. So-called "national" advertising is carried on through magazines and papers of wide circulation and these are able through this 2irculation to demand for their space extremely large sums, ranging from $1, i 000 to $5,000 per page for one insertion.
Although advertising has reached such an enormous development in the United States, it is still generally considered to be in an empirical condition. The methods and forms to be used in adver tising campaigns to a great extent are left in the hands of advertising experts to determine the mediums to be used. By keeping a strict account, by means of "keys," of the number of inquiries re ceived through each medium, it is pos sible to a large extent to arrive at a knowledge of their respective values as advertising mediums. In spite of this, however, there still remains a large ele ment of chance. Attempts to reduce this element have been made on an elaborate scale by Professor Walter Dili Scott and others, who have analyzed adver tising over a number of years in an elaborate manner, and have been able to arrive at an estimate of averages which have been great value.
During the World War all the lead ing governments involved entered upon advertising on a large scale, first to secure enlistments in their armies and afterward to raise the large sums nec essary for carrying on the war and for the relief work which accompanied it. While all agencies of advertising were employed in this work, the most notable and picturesque method was the employ ment of posters, many of them executed with great care by the most eminent artists in the various countries. Many of these were of great beauty and ar tistic merit.
The development of advertising has been accompanied by abuses. These usually take the form of disfiguring public places and landscapes with ad vertising signs, especially along the lines of railways. Societies have been or ganized to prevent this, with excellent re sults. Several railways have undertaken to rid the landscapes through which their lines pass of objectionable signs. Similar efforts have been made to limit the erection of billboards in cities to places where their presence would be most in offensive.
Accompanying the conditions of the business world which followed the World War, advertising took on a great im petus in 1919 and 1920. This resulted not only from a desire on the part of business men to increase their revenue, but also from the fact that many firms found it more profitable to invest large sums of money in advertising than to pay them out in the form of taxation on their surplus profits. As a result of this, manymagazines of large circu lation acquired an enormous revenue through increased advertising. In many cases the space given to the advertising pages greatly exceeded those devoted to text matter, even in magazines de voted to general literature. There are many journals devoted to the technique of advertising and several of these have a very wide general circulation.