The Definition of Advertising Exposure

Definition Of Advertising: The word “advertising” is derived from the Latin word Reclamare, which means, “to approve, shout, shout, cry”, reflecting the existence of the primary advertising communication – oral verbal advertising. This lexeme has survived in a number of Western European languages and through French influence has taken root. The concept Werbung, used in the German language, focuses on the impact of advertising function, as shown by a related root of the word – a well-known verb “to recruit”.

In English, the beginning of the XIX century was widely used verb “Advertise”, which in XV-XVI centuries, as indicated by the Oxford Dictionary, means simply a message about anything, thus emphasizing informational advertising function. Also other languages added to the concept of Publicite (French), Publicitad (Spanish) an indication of the mass advertising destination. In general, the concept of “advertising” as a term that defines a particular type of activity, namely advertising, was finally formed in the second half of the XVIII century.

Advertising is a special kind of communication activity, which has an economic basis and accompanies humankind throughout its entire history of the development. There are three fundamental conditions for the emergence and subsequent development of advertising in the process of the evolution of society …

The emergence of the market of goods and services.
The emergence of a market for information dissemination tools on goods and services offered for sale.
The emergence of the market for consumers of goods and services advertised.

Historically, the concept of advertising for a long time meant everything connected with the dissemination in the society of information about goods and services using all available means of communication at that time.

Gradually, the development of advertising has led to the fact that from it seceded and became independently develop such communication areas as public relations, direct marketing, promotion of goods and services, point of sale advertising, exhibition activities, sponsorship, branding, and others. At the end of XX century, the whole set of communication lines associated with informing and influence consumers, became known as marketing communications system.

Table of Contents

Universal Definition Of Advertising

Advertising is a one-way form of impersonal communication, carried out on a paid basis in order to attract attention to the object of advertising.

To date, there are two main approaches to the definition of the term “advertising”. In the narrow sense, the term “advertising” means an announcement in the means of disseminating information. This point of view is most common in practice the concept of “advertising” interpreted in a broader sense. Advertising is also referred to as exhibition events, commercial seminars, prospectuses, catalogs, posters and so on.

Legislative Definition Of Advertising

Advertising activities are regulated by legal acts of the federal legislative bodies. The Federal Law “On Advertising” formulated definition of advertising: “Advertising – information distributed by any means, in any form or by any means, addressed to an indefinite number of persons and aimed at drawing attention to the object of advertising, the establishment or maintenance of interest in promotion on the market”.

The Federal Law “On Advertising” uses the following basic concepts related to the definition of advertising:

The object of advertising: Product means its individualization, the manufacturer or seller of the goods, the results of intellectual activity or event (including a sporting event, concert, contest, festival, risk-based games and betting) to draw attention to advertising which is aimed.
The product: A product of activity (including work, service) for sale, exchange or other introduction into circulation.
Improper advertising: Advertising that does not meet the requirements of the legislation.
Advertiser: The manufacturer or seller of the goods or otherwise determine the subject of advertising and (or) the maintenance of a person advertising.
Advertisement producer: The person who performs the whole or part of the above information ready for distribution in the form of advertising form.
Consumers advertising: The person to draw attention to the subject of advertising, which is, directed advertising.

The Federal Law “On Advertising” regulates relations arising in the process of production, placement and distribution of advertising in the markets of goods and services, and helps to navigate in the legal space of advertising, and, accordingly, distinguish advertising from other information. The law is not comprehensive and, in particular, does not apply to …

Political advertising and campaigning;
Reference and information and analytical materials that do not have as their main goal the promotion of goods on the market;
Messages of public authorities, other state bodies, local self-government bodies;
Signboards and pointers that do not contain information of an advertising nature;
Announcements of individuals or legal entities that are not related to the performance of entrepreneurial activities;
Information about the product, its manufacturer, the importer or exporter, placed on the product or its packaging;
Any items of registration of goods placed on the product or its packaging and not related to another product.

Legislative definition of advertising is often criticized in connection with the definition of advertising solely as “information”. It is considered by some experts to be limited, not expressing the specifics of advertising.

In practice, this definition of advertising as “information” generates a whole line of social criticism of advertising, primarily because of the difference in approaches to the definition of “information” and the associated difficulties in identifying specific information messages as advertising messages.

Analysis of the formulation of the legislative definition of advertising shows the following …

Legislative definition provides a broad interpretation of advertising, according to which advertising is almost unlimited information in any expression and on any media; In other words, it is information and property objects that have an advertising function.
The legislative definition uses the term “any”, “information” without indication of its form, and the term “indefinite” in relation to the addressee of advertising, three times in the format of one sentence, which indicates the possibility of arbitrary interpretation of the legislative formulation.
Legislative definition indicates that the advertisement is addressed to an indefinite circle of people, so there is ambiguity about such forms of advertising as targeted advertising messages, where the circle of persons is always certain.

These facts of non-specificity of the legislative definition lead to misunderstanding by market participants of rules of advertising by law. Unclear definition of the object, in relation to which introduced legislation, can provoke disturbances and difficulty in qualifying violations in the advertising market. This, in turn, can lead to increased administrative methods of influence in the market, which negatively affects the development of civil society institutions.

Other Definitions Of Advertising

To date, there are many definitions of the concept of “advertising.” This shows, on the one hand, the complexity of the phenomenon itself, on the other hand is the existence of different points of view on its system-forming characteristics.

In the practice to date has developed three main groups of approaches to the definition of advertising: news, activity and as well as combining group, which may be called integral.

The first group of approaches to the definition of the concept of “advertising” identifies advertising, primarily as information – a message that represents the audience some object, phenomenon, process, and the like. It is this viewpoint that is reflected in the Federal Law “On Advertising”.

The second group of approaches to the definition of the concept of “advertising” is fundamentally different from the first – advertising is not limited to “information” and “communication”, and is understood in these definitions as advertising activities, that is, to create such “messages” and bringing them to recipients.

The concept of “advertising” is thus equated with the concept of “advertising activity” and is presented as a system of activities. This is the position held by the bulk of the advertising corporate community in the person of its professional associations. It believes that advertising is not “advertising information”, but a kind of activity. Accordingly, and legislative norms should be directed to regulate “activities”, and not “messages”.

Therefore, the inevitable appearance of a third, integral point of view on the definition of the concept of “advertising”, according to which this phenomenon includes both advertising and advertising information. As part of the integrated approach, the definition of advertising is formulated as follows: “Advertising is a type of activity or produced in its resulting information products”.

Analysis of the wording of this definition of advertising shows the following. A communication in communication theory is information received by the addressee. Consequently, some information only becomes an advertising message when it is prepared in a special way and brought to the audience.

Until that moment, the message can be called the result of a professional activity of a specialist, but this message will only be advertised when it is passed on to the audience through mass communication channels. The transfer of an advertising message is an activity.

Consequently, in advertising, communication and activities are inextricably linked, they cannot, in fact, exist without each other. Therefore, advertising can be viewed as a systemic unity of the two components – advertising information and advertising activities.

Advertising, therefore, is identified as a field of social practice, with inherent relationships, processes, results. The fact that the legal regulation of both advertising messages and advertising activities can serve as a confirmation of the validity of this approach.

Signs Of Advertising

Regardless of the advertising definitions in question, each of them has a number of fundamental elements that determine the main content of advertising and allow you to clearly identify advertising messages and advertising activities, separate them from other activities and other messages. These include the following …

The cost of creating and sending a message: Advertising is a paid form of communication, as the advertising message is generated and transmitted to the audience for value basis, i.e. for a fee from the advertiser. The advertiser pays for both the development and production of the advertising message itself, as well as its placement on the advertising communication channel. Commonly used expression “free advertising” is figurative in nature and implies that advertising is paid not by the one whose offer is advertised, but by the other party. Therefore, in some cases, advertising either is free of charge on the mass communication channel, however it is always connected with the requirement of legislation or with the charity work of the mass communication channel itself. In this case, it is more correct to talk about the ethical position of the rejection of profit, since the channel pays for advertising by the fact that it loses profit from the commercial use of the advertising space or time.
The source of funding for advertising is clearly indicated: Advertising is carried out by a non-anonymous advertiser – the source of the advertising message, identified by the audience. Traditionally it is assumed that the source of advertising communication is the one who pays for it. The advertiser pays for advertising in order to convince people of the benefits of their proposal. At the same time, they wants the advertising audience to clearly identify the advertised object of the advertiser, and sometimes, both at once.
The advertising message is not personalized: Advertising communication is a form of mass communication, that is, impersonal information exchange. Thus, advertising information is not intended for a single individual or legal entity, but for a group of such persons. A group of natural or legal persons, which is intended advertising message, is defined as the target audience advertising. Audiences of advertising can be both global (to cover the population of countries or regions of the world), and local (to cover the population of individual regions, cities or regions).
The presentation of the advertised offer is of an impersonal nature: Advertising information is provided to representatives of the audience of advertising not personally by the advertiser, and through intermediaries, which serve most of the channels of mass communication.
Advertising information has a convincing character: The advertising message is aimed at attracting attention to the object of advertising and contains an element of persuasion in the advantages of this proposal in comparison with analogues. Advertising, limited representation “neutral” and does not contain information related component in order to convince the audience of advertising to take certain actions with respect to the object of advertising is not advertising in the usual sense.

This review under the term “advertising” considers a phenomenon that satisfies the five above mentioned characteristics. The same signs are used to identify this phenomenon. If the activity of an organization produces products that meet these requirements, it is called advertising products.

According to these characteristics it is also possible to determine whether an enterprise belongs to the sphere of advertising. In order to determine as the subject of the advertising market, a company must be of advertisements, i.e. to carry out the production of advertising materials, or of advertisements, i.e. to carry out distribution of the advertising information.