Retail Advertising embraces the announce ments of merchants, large and small, in their own communities, from the full page in each day's newspapers employed by great department stores to the small announcements once or twice a week of the minor shopkeeper. This form of advertising is really a species of news, prepared daily, and is of such interest to the public that many readers take newspapers for their store advertisements, and the journals which carry most of these have the largest circulations. Merchants also publish store news by means of circulars through the mails, minor local jour nals, programs, bulletins, posters, etc.
General Advertising is the general term de scribing exploitation intended to reach the public nationally or in a group of States. It is found chiefly in magazines and reviews, and in daily newspapers. Street cars, billboards and bulletins are employed as accessories. General advertis ers include large manufacturers of food articles, soaps, musical instruments, clothing, beverages, tobacco, household and office supplies, furniture, plate, jewelry, sanitary appliances, etc., as well as the great insurance, steamship and railroad companies, cities and villages seeking popula tion, banks and trust companies and so forth. This is easily the largest branch of advertising, and the one most influential in distribution. It acts as a stimulus to the local merchant's efforts, and is so wide in scope as to touch every class and interest of the nation however remote.
Mail Order Advertising is the term ap plied to a form of exploitation peculiarly American. When the newer communities of the West were insufficiently supplied by their local merchants, several intelligent merchants in Chicago, a city advantageously situated for this form of trade, began to advertise commodities to be forwarded direct to consumers by freight and express, receiving orders and remittances through the mails. This was the beginning of °mail advertising. Several of these mer chants have built up businesses with a gross annual income of $50,000,000 or more, selling practically everything in the way of supplies, machinery, food, clothing, etc., direct to the consumer. Thousands of small advertisers op erate with a few commodities through the mails, and many local merchants conduct mail order departments. Mail order advertising is found in the magazines, the farm and religious press, the newspapers and in a class of cheaply printed periodicals known as °mail order having enormous circulations among people on farms and in villages who are not reached by more costly magazines or daily papers. A large
volume of mail order advertising is also done through catalogues and printed matter sent through the mails. This branch of trade has had a very large increase in volume since the introduction of the parcels post system.
Agricultural Advertising is a form of pub licity similar to mail order advertising, but which appears chiefly in farm periodicals and exploits machinery, fertilizers, farm animals, stock food, building materials and farm supplies.
Trade Journal Advertising appears in the numerous special publications devoted to manu facturing, retail and wholesale, commerce, finance, medicine and the professions, mining, transportation, etc. Its object is to acquaint local merchants with commodities manufac turers wish to distribute, to inform engineers and superintendents of manufacturing plants about new machinery, and, generally, to main tain that great organization which produces and handles commodities up to the point where they pass into the consumer's hands.
Advertising In the United States advertising may be divided roughly into four groups, represented by the mediums used: Periodical advertising, outdoor advertising, street-car advertising and mail order adver tising.
Periodical Advertising includes news papers, magazines, reviews, trade, denomina tional and farm publications, periodicals printed in foreign languages, theatre and concert pro grams and other publications, of which there are not less than 23,000 of all kinds. In 1914 the output of printing and publishing in this country was valued at $810,000,000, of which, it is estimated, fully $255,000,000 represented revenue from advertisements in periodicals. Advertising in periodicals exceeds receipts from subscriptions by $90,000,000. The advertising revenue of some of our largest newspapers runs into millions of dollars yearly. Magazines have shown the greatest growth in numbers, circula tion and advertising patronage the past 20 years. It is held to be a safe rule to spend 5 per cent of the selling price of a commodity in adver tising, so that the advertising for a single month in the 30 leading publications would have to re turn a gross amount exceeding $25,000,000 to be profitable, or nearly $300,000,000 yearly. While the largest newspaper circulations seldom exceed 300,000 copies, daily, the circulation of several monthly magazines is more than 1,000, 000 copies per issue, and of one weekly more than 2,000,000 copies per issue.