How Print Advertising Has Changed Over Time — And How it Hasn’t

The most impressive feature of print advertising is its endurance. And not just in the sense of the more permanent nature of its existence. Print is physical. Digital advertising isn’t. But it’s more than that.

Print adapts. Print persists. Print advertising has been around for thousands of years in various forms, and even modern-day print advertising can trace its roots back for centuries.

So it’s worth taking some time to look at how print advertising has changed over time, and how it hasn’t. Since before the advent of electricity, print advertising was already on the stage. Before phones, before cars, before radio and television, before indoor plumbing — print advertising was out in force, making sales, promising solutions, and delivering on that promise. 

Here’s a print advertisement from 1855 (from the Jay Paull library). Just the fact that it still exists after nearly 200 years ought to get your attention. A merchant put out this ad for watches and clocks about 170 years ago. 

Look what’s already present in various forms in this ad that we still see today in print advertising:

• A promise of reduced prices
• New trendy merchandise
• The latest technology and advancements
• Appeals to different needs — style, repair, selection

It’s all there in this tiny print ad from before the Civil War.

As technology advanced and print advertising became more sophisticated and common, ad copywriters started learning a few things about how to increase response rates and sales revenue. 

Then, in the late 1890s, print ad prices started going down, and opportunities to publish ads went up as magazines and newspapers gained readership. 

Why did prices go down? Publishers began lowering newsstand prices to sell more copies, and they made up for the lower prices with ads. In 1893, for instance, Munsey’s Magazine slashed its newsstand prices from 25 cents to 10 cents. This led to huge increases in subscriptions, and thus a far bigger audience for print advertisers who could now buy ad space in the magazine.

Here’s a look at more print advertising through the decades.

The early years – text-heavy print advertising

Here’s a print ad from 1899 for seeds from Burpee’s Farm:

Notice how many marketing strategies you see in this ad that are still in use today.

It has two pricing packages, with more incentive to take the larger one. It offers cash prizes in some sort of contest. It offers a free catalogue — and this, in fact, is the primary offer. It comes with a content offer explaining how the farm grows sweet peas. 

The ad sells seeds, but its main offer is the catalogue, because, just like content marketing today, the merchant knows that if you can just get your products in front of the consumer, they will be more likely to buy them. 

Here’s another ad from 1899 selling watches that comes with a warranty and a money-back guarantee. 

Do you ever feel clever for coming up with things like guarantees and warranties? Well, you’ve been beat by marketers from over a hundred years ago. The money-back guarantee became effective once mass production — another byproduct of technology — started ramping up. Some mass-produced products had very poor quality, so higher quality products could stand out by offering a guarantee.

Here’s one from 1907, advertising a pony cart for your kids. 

Notice this one includes a clear call to action to “write today” for a beautiful free catalogue. Again, they’re not selling a single product. They’re selling the catalogue. Why? Because back at this time, there was no internet. More than that, there were no shopping malls and very few cars. So to get your products before customers, the best way was to print a catalogue and then do whatever you could to get them to ask for it. 

Today — even in the internet age — many smart companies still use print catalogues. Why? Because they work. 

Here’s an ad from 1900 selling pool tables, again offering a catalogue. And just like we still see today in various forms, they’re offering payment plans for this higher-priced item.

Print advertising increases dominance

By the 1920s, print advertising copywriters were getting very good, and produced some iconic ads that still get talked about and learned from today. One of the most famous is this ad for a piano-playing course, printed in 1925.

Today, not much has changed with courses and programs. People still sell courses teaching all sorts of skills and hobbies, and we’re still trying to sell people on the benefits of those courses — how the courses will improve the lives of everyone who takes them. In this ad, the benefit is silencing the mockery of your friends and turning it into envy. Powerful stuff.

It’s also worth noting the larger role of imagery in this ad. As you’ll see, the presence of graphics and imagery increases dramatically in print advertising as time passes, and it’s already happening as early as 1925. 

By this time, brand advertising also began to take hold. 

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Two early brands included Kellogg’s and Ivory soap. Kellogg’s spent over a million dollars in ads in 1915, an astounding sum for that time. Proctor & Gamble spent $11,000 on Ivory soap ads in the late 1800s. 

By 1916, Ivory had achieved such brand dominance that their entire headline for the ad below is just their name and their unique sales proposition of being 99% pure.

Imagery and text unite as the mad men era dawns

Radio entered the picture in the 1920s, and magazine circulation accelerated while newspapers continued to dominate. This gave print advertising what could be considered its golden years. And it was during this time you saw a huge increase of photos, drawings, and other graphics begin to exert their influence in the realm of print advertising.

Here are two ads — one for tobacco from 1945, and another for Cadillac from 1948 — both of which lean heavily on imagery and the emotional power of visuals to make a strong impression.

Not long after that, television arrived, and everything changed. Print advertising didn’t go away — far from it. But it now had a serious competitor, because the power of visuals on print can be overshadowed by moving pictures.

But it’s easy to turn off the TV, and when you do, all the ads go dark too. In printed materials, the ads have more staying power, and so print advertising just had to work a little harder to grab and keep people’s attention. It was during these years you saw even more iconic ads, such as this classic from David Ogilvy.

The image itself sells the shirt, because the man wearing it represented something that captivated and intrigued people. Ogilvy understood the importance of standing out. And if every other shirt company is just showing pictures of men wearing their shirts, then ours will show a man with an eyepatch wearing our shirts.

Modern print advertising takes hold as 20^th century closes

As the 1970s and 80s saw television take firm control of modern life, print advertising learned to capitalize on new methods of getting attention. It also continued using some of the same old methods that worked decades before, and still work today. 

Here’s a print ad for an early type of computer for businesses, from 1977.

This is yet another older example of what we call content marketing today. It’s not really selling the computer. It’s appealing to a business authority and explaining why they would buy this computer. Its headline is very much like thousands of blog headlines that get written every day in the internet age. It’s a perfect blend of content and imagery, and it includes a response card so they can measure the effectiveness of the ad.

Another trend that grew in popularity during these decades was the use of celebrity and pop culture references. 

Here’s an ad from MetLife from 1998, which used the Peanuts characters in its ads for many years.

This is a brand-heavy advertisement offering very little reason to consider their product other than the name of the company, and the positive feeling people get from the popular characters in the ad. Peanuts was arguably in its heyday around this time, and MetLife seized on that to great effect for many years.

Next, take a look at this Nike ad from 1994. 

Here, the ad relies almost entirely on the celebrity power of the athlete, in this case Deion Sanders, who was a huge NFL star during the 1990s. Nike linked their brand with many athletes during these years, and set the pattern for other shoe companies as well as countless other industries.

The internet age

Then, the internet arrived, and everything changed again. This time, the changes in advertising seemed more extreme than at any time since print advertising began to assert itself. 

But, the strategies and methods didn’t change that much, only the mechanics of them.

Now, many print ads will include websites and QR codes, in addition to phone numbers, so consumers have multiple ways to respond to the ad. 

But even today, free samples, testimonials, celebrity power, payment plans, contests, warranties, tiered pricing, and content-marketing offers still engage consumers just as well today as they did over a hundred years ago.

Pro Tip

A door hanger on your doorstep with a compelling and relevant offer will get more attention and response than a blizzard of social media ads that last for mere seconds as people scroll past and barely see them.

Print advertising continues to survive because print itself survives. And what worked over a hundred years ago still works well today, even as the technology, tracking, audience targeting, competition, and many other things have changed.  It’s one of the best ways to beat competitors in the marketing game and to avoid dealing with online ad fraud altogether.

Today — door hangers get more focused attention than any other form of print advertising, because they exist in an environment with the fewest distractions — your front porch.

See what door to door marketing can do for your company.