This lesson talks about Advertisements that appear in newspapers and magazines. Advertising is the art of drawing public attention to products, services, information of public interest or the ideologies of an organization. While advertisers rely largely on newspapers and magazines to publicize their products and services, the journal publishers in turn are dependent on the revenue these advertisements generate.

Vilamparankal i.e., advertisements are broadly classified as ‘Aka Vilamparankal’ and ‘Pura Vilamparankal’. Aka Vilamparam refers to advertisements printed in journals, postal advertisements, radio and television advertisements. Wall posters, banners, skywriting, posters on buses, neon signs, billboards are pura Vilamparankal.

In the early years of journal publishing not many advertisements were published. In India, advertisements first appeared in Gujarat and in the ‘Madras Gazette’. Initially, government advertisements were published free of cost. This trend was changed by Robert Knight who insisted that goverments pay for their advertisements. Gandhiji’s ‘Young India’, Annie Beasnt’s ‘New India’ and Rajaji’s ‘Vimosanam’ are a few journals that did not publish advertisements. Even today certain journals do not publish advertisements for tobacco, products, alcohol and films.

There are several types of advertisements. Some of these are: product advertisement, institutional advertisement, industrial advertisement, trade advertisement, classifieds, retail advertisement, legal advertisement and Government advertisement.

Advertising agencies play an important role in the world of advertising. The art of creating an effective advertisement calls for many skills like brevity, word play, striking visuals and a sound understanding of the target audience.

The importance of advertisements can be guaged from the growing number of employment ads and matrimonials in newspapers. Advertisements create awareness about products and services. Non- commercial advertisements issued in public interest educate and motivate the masses. Designed to attract, they blunt the reasoning powers of the consumers forcing them to spend unnecessarily.