Outdoor Advertising includes posters and placards pasted on billboards and barns, painted signs on barns, fences and walls, as well as specially constructed bulletin boards in large cities, many of which are electrically illumi nated at night, the erection of advertisements about buildings in process of construction, the use of advertising along railroad lines and at populous seaside resorts, etc. As much as $20 per square foot has been paid for the privilege of advertising on a wall in New York city. Electric signs, with advertisements outlined in incandescent lamps, are an important form of expenditure for outdoor advertising. The larg est advertisement of this sort in the world is a single word on a New York building, with letters 60 feet high, visible to 50,000,000 passen gers on ferries each year. Advertising of this character adds to the attractiveness of a city by its diffusion of light through the main streets at no cost to the public. Billboards and other outdoor advertising are more often charged with abuses and unsightliness than any other form, and in some cities are prohibited in the vicinity of parks by municipal regulation. They have never come under control to the extent common on the Continent, and in comparison with the outdoor advertisements of London are perhaps pleasing. Outdoor advertising is thought to be effective in reaching persons not habitual readers of newspapers, as well as to lay emphasis upon newspaper and magazine advertising by repeating the names of com modities more fully described in the press. It necessarily affords no opportunities for descrip tion of articles, hut is confined to repetition of brands and trademarks.
Street Car Advertising is a medium that has become prominent in the United States since the introduction of electric traction and the spread of trolley lines through cities and suburbs. An enormous population is carried in these vehicles — more than 5,000,000,000 cash fares are paid on trolleys yearly, and perhaps two-thirds of these represent an extra ride in the shape of a transfer. It is possible to main tain an advertising card in the 32,000 cars throughout the United States, covering about 400 towns and cities, for $150,000 a year, and in point of the number of persons who can be reached for a given sum the trolley, elevated and subway lines are said to offer the cheapest form of advertising. Car advertising in New York city, it is claimed, has a national circula tion owing to the fact that 250,000 persons from all over the country are constantly in the metropolis. More matters may be printed on a car card than on an outdoor poster, and while there are few instances where large advertisers have attained success through the use of bill boards alone, quite a number have confined their operations to street cars with profit. As a rule, though, advertising aims toward a bal anced effect in magazines, newspapers, cars, bill boards and printed matter.
Mail In 1679 a London hab erdasher gave to each customer who purchased goods to the value of a guinea a printed list of his stock, and this was regarded as a dangerous innovation because, if followed generally, it would result in the investment of too much tradesmen's capital in printed bills. From this humble beginning the use of circulars and cata logues has grown to a point where, at present, in the United States, every second letter carried through the mails is an advertising letter, and for every periodical posted there is mailed a catalogue or brochure. Postage on advertising matter aggregates between $25,000,000 and $30, 000,000 annually and this perhaps represented only one-tenth the cost of compiling and print ing such advertising. Mail advertising takes many forms, from the leather-bound catalogue of 500 or more pages, to the humble postal card. Every general advertiser has descriptive matter in booklet form which is mailed freely to those who express interest in his magazine or news paper advertising, and in many instances the periodicals are used only to excite such interest, printed matter being relied upon to tell the whole story of such complicated apparatus as an agricultural implement, heating furnace or piano player. Many advertising letters are sent out to lists of persons who may be interested in certain commodities, either printed in imitation of typewriting or actually written on a typing machine. Mail advertising also embraces the distribution at regular postal rates of small periodicals devoted to the interests of a manu facturing or merchandising house. There are hundreds of these personal business organs, some of which have been of sufficient interest to enlarge into standard magazines. Mail ad
vertising also includes the distribution of what are known as °advertising novelties,° ingenious or useful trifles ranging from puzzles to match boxes, and comic cards to desk calendars, all bearing the name of an advertiser. Blotters, calendars, almanacs, reproductions of paintings and many other forms of printed advertising, upon tin, cardboard, paper, wood, leather, cloth, bark, porcelain, glass and other substances travel through the mails. This is the most costly form of advertising known, in proportion to the number of persons that can be reached for a given expenditure, but as most of this matter is sent to persons thought to be directly interested, it often pays a larger return than advertising distributed promiscuously through periodicals, etc.
Advertising Soon after adver tising began to be used nationally instead of lo cally, it was found convenient to put details of correspondence with newspapers, arranging rates, writing the advertisements, seeing that they were properly inserted, etc., into the hands of a new functionary who then sprang up—the Advertising Agent. The first advertising agent to open an office for the reception of advertise ments in this country was Volney B. Palmer. He began business in Philadelphia in 1840, and subsequently established offices in Boston and Baltimore as well. Before this, however, the advertising agent was known abroad, for Balzac mentions Depute d'Arcis9 as among the tenants of a Paris rookery in the thirties, "women of the town, still-born insurance com panies, newspapers fated to die young, impos sible railway companies, discount brokers and advertisement agents who lack the publicity they profess to sell — in short, all description of shy or doubtful enterprise.° When national ad vertising was new there existed no newspaper directories. To advertise in a given territory it was necessary to go to an advertising agent who had lists of the newspapers and knew their rates. Agents often purchased several columns of space in a number of newspapers by the year, reselling allotments to advertisers for a price less than the newspaper would charge direct. The advertising agent was thus a broker, and to encourage him in developing ad vertising the newspapers paid him a commission on what he sent in. Then, as demand grew, he became also an adviser to new advertisers, giv ing counsel as to the ways in which a given appropriation should be spent, preparing the text and illustrations and supplementary matter to be used, checking insertions in papers and bills, etc. This detail work is complex, and the advertising agent usually performs it more rea sonably than an advertiser could do himself. From a broker in space, the advertising agent of the present day has become a specialist whose services are valued because he has a wide experience in directing the operations of many advertisers, as well as an equipment for writing and illustrating advertising matter. While the advertising agent is still paid by commissions of 10 to 15 per cent allowed him by publishers of newspapers and magazines, he is in no sense the agent of the publishers, but receives rather a wholesale rate upon advertising space, which he sells to the advertiser at a retail or gross price. An advertising agent's interests are so wholly bound up with his advertising client's that in some instances he receives for his serv ices a salary besides. Advertising agents have been of the utmost importance in the develop ment of advertising, for by active work in lead ing conservative business houses to utilize this modern distributive force, they have built up the revenues of publishers, improved publica tions and driven advertising charlatans from the field. A few of the largest advertisers maintain departments in their business to pre pare and supervise their own advertising, while publishers of magazines and newspapers also carry on independently the work of converting business houses to advertising. Despite this, the agent's function has remained an indispensable one, and with the development of advertising he has entrenched it by specializing. One of the leading New York advertising i agencies, for ex ample, has been instrumental n building up the large showing of steamship, railroad and travel advertising now carried in leading magazines, with supplementary advertising of hotels and resorts. Two other agencies are known for their work among advertisers of agricultural implements, another has found its field in the development of textile advertising through mag azine and trade journal advertising, etc.