Advertising has existed in one form or another for centuries. From stone tablets to Internet pop-ups, people have advertised goods and services available for the use and benefit of others. In the early years of the United States, most advertisements appeared in printed form, primarily in broadsides or newspapers. Unlike today's advertising, the purpose of these advertisements was to provide information about events or available goods and services rather than to stimulate demand.
Broadsides were single sheets produced to spread information about a particular topic. They often advertised products available in local stores or services provided by local professionals, but broadsides were more often used to announce something unique and short-term. During the American Revolution, officials used broadsides to recruit soldiers for the Continental Army. The poems that became the songs "Yankee Doodle" and, following the War of 1812, "The Star-Spangled Banner" appeared in broadsides and spread rapidly along the Atlantic Coast. Broadsides could be produced quickly and used to spread information rapidly through a community.
More typical advertisements appeared in the weekly newspapers published in colonial America and the early Republic. From the time the first successful American newspaper appeared in 1704, printers depended on the income from advertising to help keep their publications solvent. Up to one-half of any given issue could be given over to advertisements. To modern readers, the newspaper advertisements of the early Republic look like today's classifieds. Woodcuts of a ship or a hat could indicate the type of advertisement but did not really give much information. Potential customers had to read the advertisements in order to know what was being offered. A great variety of advertisements appeared, ranging from lists of goods for sale in a local shop, to announcements of local dance instructors or dame schools (schools for boys and girls set up by women teachers in their homes), to want ads for various jobs, to announcements of runaway slaves. The advertisements did not appear in any particular order or place but rather were scattered throughout the newspaper wherever they fit.
Two primary factors explain the apparent lack of creativity in newspaper advertising in the early Republic. First, the available technology produced limitations. Printing presses prior to the 1830s had changed little from the days of Gutenberg. Type had to be set by hand and printing across columns was prohibitively expensive. Illustrations could be printed only by using woodcuts that had to be hand-carved. Hence, advertisements appeared primarily in narrow columns with few illustrations. Second, although advertising constituted an important income source and gave readers information they sought, newspaper printers at the time gave as much space as possible to politics. From the beginnings of the arguments with Great Britain in the 1760s until at least the middle of the nineteenth century, newspaper producers aimed the material they published at audiences involved in political debates.