Define advertising. What are its main features? Explain.

Advertising is a technique used for promotion of a product. Through advertising the companies attract customers towards their product and induce them to purchase it. Some of the common modes of advertising are newspapers, magazines, television, etc. The following are the important features of advertising.

(i) Cost Involved: Advertising involves a cost. It is a paid form of promotion. The costs involved in advertising are to be borne by the sponsors.

(ii) Impersonal Mode: Advertising is an impersonal mode of communication. That is, there is no face-to-face interaction between the customer and the advertiser. Thus, it lacks a personal touch and creates a monologue.

(iii) Specific Sponsor: There are always some identified individuals or sponsors who undertake the responsibility of designing it and bearing the cost involved.

Advertising is defined as the impersonal form of communication which is paid form by the marketer to promote some goods or services, It is commonly used as the promotional tool of the company, 

The important features of advertising are as follows:

1. Paid Form Advertising is a paid form of communication which means the sponsor has to” bear the cost of communication with the prospects. 

2. Impersonality There is no direct face to face contact between the prospect and advertiser, It is, therefore, referred to as the impersonal method of promotion. 

3. Identified Sponsor Advertising is undertaken by some Identified individual or company, who makes the advertising efforts and also bears the cost of it.

Definition: In the words of C.L. Bolling, ‘‘Advertising can be described as the art of creating a demand for article or a service.”

Features: Main features of advertising are as under:

i. Paid Form: Only that attempt of the seller on which he has spent some money to communicate information to the consumer is called advertising. If without incurring any expenditure some information relating to some product or service is published, it will not be called advertising. It may be called propaganda or publicity.

ii. Impersonal Presentation: Advertising is non-personal presentation of information. In other words, advertiser and consumer do not come into personal contact. Advertising is a monologue and not a dialogue.

iii. Speedy and Mass Communication: Advertising is a speedy medium of communication. Besides being speedy, its operational area is very vast. In other words, it reaches millions of people simultaneously.

iv. Identified Sponsor: Another feature of advertising is that its sponsor can be identified. If due to some reason it is difficult to identify the sponsor, then that information cannot be called advertising. It will be called propaganda or publicity.