The Ad Agency and Ad Content in the 1840s

ABSTRACT

Volney B. Palmer, the father of the American advertising agency, introduced the idea of systematic advertising in the 1840s, beginning a new chapter of the newspaper advertising business. This study compared advertising content and form in two newspapers in the 1840s, one with Palmer as an ad agent and one without, to explore the impact of advertising agencies on newspaper advertising in ad agencies’ early days. This study content analyzed 827 advertisements from twelve issues of two newspapers in 1840, 1845, and 1849 and documented the differences in advertising amount, product categories, advertiser types, locations, and designs over time and between the two newspapers. While the results show significant changes in advertising amount and advertiser types, limited evidence was found to support the ad agency’s impact on growing advertisement size, expanding outreach to regional and national markets, and adopting more illustrations in design. The findings call into question generalizations made in the advertising history literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Advertising agency
• content analysis
• newspaper advertising
• newspaper business
• Volney B. Palmer

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Edd Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900,” in The Media in America: A History, ed. W. David Sloan (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2008), 267–86; Edd Applegate, Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America. Contributions to The Study of Media and Communications (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998); and Donald R. Holland, “Volney B. Palmer (1799–1864): The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man,” Journalism Monographs 44 (1976): 1–40.

2. Tim P. Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency,” American Journalism 30, no. 4 (2013): 450–72, https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2013.846714.

3. Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man;” F. Allen Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940); and Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

4. See Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency” for details on the early workings of Palmer’s four agency offices and how they created the first recognizable features of what would be known as advertising agencies.

5. Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900,” 277.

6. Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man.”

7. Pamela Walker Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 157–82.

8. Laird, Advertising Progress, 57–100.

9. Frank Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968); and Gerald J. Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in The Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).

10. Terence H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); and Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising.

11. Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man;” and Applegate, Personalities and Products; and Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency.”

12. Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in The Nineteenth Century.

13. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing; Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age; and James D. Norris, Advertising and the Transformation of American Society, 1865–1920. Contributions in Economics and Economic History (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991).

14. Ralph M. Hower, The History of An Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949, rev. ed. Harvard Studies in Business History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 5; Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising; and Applegate, Personalities and Products.

15. Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900”; Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising; Applegate, Personalities and Products; Stephen R. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York: Morrow, 1984); and Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising.

16. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing.

17. Norris, Advertising and the Transformation of American Society, 1865–1920.

18. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising.

19. Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future, 243.

20. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising, 232.

21. Presbrey, 210.

22. Gordon E. Miracle, “An Historical Analysis to Explain The Evolution of Advertising Agency Services,” Journal of Advertising 6, no. 3 (1977): 25, https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1977.10672704.

23. Laird, Advertising Progress, 156.

24. Tim P. Vos and You Li, “Justifying Commercialization: Legitimating Discourses and the Rise of American Advertising,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 9, no. 3 (2013): 559–580, https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990134937.

25. Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900.”

26. Applegate.

27. Laird, Advertising Progress; Miracle, “An Historical Analysis to Explain The Evolution of Advertising Agency Services,” 25.

28. Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998); and Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future.

29. Laird, Advertising Progress.

30. See note 19 above.

31. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age.

32. Hower, The History of An Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949.

33. Vos and Li, “Justifying Commercialization: Legitimating Discourses and the Rise of American Advertising.”

34. Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1977).

35. Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in The Nineteenth Century; Kevin G. Barnhurst and John Nerone, The Form of News: A History (New York: Guilford Press, 2001); and Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in the Nineteenth-Century America (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

36. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing, 18.

37. Laird, 18.

38. See note 18 above.

39. Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising, 20.

40. See note 19 above.

41. See note 16 above.

42. See note 20 above.

43. Presbrey.

44. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing; and Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising.

45. Laird.

46. Laird, 151.

47. See note 18 above.

48. See note 16 above.

49. Presbrey, 261.

50. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising; and Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future.

51. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing, 23.

52. Laird, 25.

53. Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency.”

54. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising; Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising.

55. Hower, The History of An Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949; and Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising.

56. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising; Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing; and Stephen Gennaro, “J. Walter Thompson and The Creation of The Modern Advertising Agency,” Advertising and Society Review 10, no. 3 (2009): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1353/asr.0.0035.

57. Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency”; Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man”; and Hower, The History of An Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer & Son at Work, 1869–1949.

58. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing, 160.

59. See note 12 above.

60. Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising.

61. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising; and Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators.

62. See note 21 above.

63. Vos, “Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency”; Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900”; Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; and Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man.”

64. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising, 115.

65. Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man,” 36.

66. Holland, 361.

67. V. B. Palmer, V. B. Palmer’s Business-Men’s Almanac, for the Year 1850 (New York: V. B. Palmer, 1850).

68. Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900,” 289.

69. According to V. B. Palmer, V. B. Palmer’s Business-Men’s Almanac, for the Year 1850, as summarized in Applegate, “The Development of Advertising, 1700–1900,” 289, “He is an agent for the best papers of every section of the whole country. He is empowered by the proprietors to make contracts and give receipts. His long experience and practical knowledge qualify him to give valuable information. A selection can be made suitably adapted to the various pursuits of advertisers. A complete system of advertising can be adapted upon either a large or small scale. The papers are on file at the Agency, where advertisers can examine them, see the terms, and obtain all requisite information to enable them to advertise judiciously, effectively and safely.”

70. See note 25 above.

71. James D. Startt and W. David Sloan, Historical Methods in Mass Communication, revised ed. Communication Textbook Series. General Communication Theory and Methodology (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2003).

72. Klaus Krippendorff, Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology, 2nd ed (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004); David Deacon, Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis, 2nd ed (New York: Hodder Arnold, 2007); and Ole R Holsti, Content Analysis for The Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1969).

73. IIker Etikan, Sulaiman Abubakar Musa, and Rukayya Sunusi, “Comparison of Convenience Sampling and Purposive Sampling,” American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics 5, no. 1 (2015): 1–4, https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11.

74. Stephen Lacy, Brendan R. Watson, Daniel Riffe, and Jennette Lovejoy, “Issues and Best Practices in Content Analysis,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 92, no. 4 (2015): 791–811, https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699015607338.

75. See James Playsted Wood, The Story of Advertising (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1958). For example, Wood’s look at newspaper advertising in the northeast after 1800 includes passages such as, “The Spy had more advertising by 1811,” (91) and “Lotteries were a staple in the advertising of the day.” (97) How Wood arrived at these conclusions, most of which imply some quantification, is never explained.

76. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Coincidently, Laird’s analysis, like Wood’s was of the Spy.

77. Melvin C. Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of The Mass Media (9th ed.) (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2000).

78. “Barnstable Patriot, and Commercial Advertiser,” Library of Congress Catalog.

79. “Barre Gazette (Barre, Mass: 1835),” Illinois Library Catalog.

80. Douglass Cecil North, The Economic Growth of The United States, 1790–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966); and Thomas Childs Cochran, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

81. J. C. G. Kennedy, Catalogue of the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United States: Showing the Town and County in which the Same are Published, How Often Issued, Their Character, and Circulation (New York: John Livingstone, 1852).

82. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising; Holland, “Volney B. Palmer, 1799–1864: The Nation’s First Advertising Agency Man.”

83. Matthew Lombard, Jennifer Snyder-Duch, and Cheryl Campanella Bracken, “Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability,” Human Communication Research 28, no. 4 (2006): 587–604, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468–2958.2002.tb00826.x; and Kimberly A. Neuendorf, The Content Analysis Guidebook (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002).

84. Richard H. Kolbe and Melissa S. Burnett, “Content-Analysis Research: An Examination of Applications With Directives For Improving Research Reliability and Objectivity,” Journal of Consumer Research 18 (1991): 243–50, https://doi.org/10.1086/209256.

85. Neuendorf, The Content Analysis Guidebook, 145.

86. Lombard, Snyder-Duch, and Bracken, “Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability.”

87. Stephen Lacy and Dan Riffe, “Sampling Error and Selecting Intercoder Reliability Samples for Nominal Content Categories: Sins of Omission and Commission in Mass Communication Quantitative Research,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73, no. 4 (1996): 969–73, https://doi.org/10.1177/107769909607300414.

88. See note 86 above.

89. See note 18 above.

90. Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future; and Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing.

91. See note 12 above.

92. Baldasty.

93. Burt, American Advertising Agencies, An Inquiry Into Their Origin, Growth, Functions and Future.

94. See note 18 above.

95. See note 16 above.

96. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators.

97. See note 90 above.

98. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and The Rise of Consumer Marketing; Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising.

99. See note 45 above.

100. See note 43 above.

101. See note 5 above,

102. See note 43 above.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim P. Vos

Tim P. Vos is a professor and director of the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He is the book series editor of Journalism in Perspective from the University of Missouri Press. Vos is an ICA Fellow and a past president of AEJMC.

You Li

You Li is an associate professor of journalism at Eastern Michigan University whose research focuses on the evolution of journalism boundaries and their intersection with business interests. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, she published recent studies on solutions journalism, media management, native advertising, and journalism and data literacy education in the journals of Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, and Digital Journalism, among others.