Advertising

Advertising in the modern sense, paid messages in mass media from an identified sponsor, dates from the second half of the nineteenth century, when cheap newspapers and branded goods arrived together. By the 1920s it was an industry with its own research, and the people who had run the First World War's propaganda offices moved into it directly: Edward Bernays sold cigarettes and bacon with the methods he had used to sell the war, and said so.

The defining feature is disclosure. An advertisement says who is speaking and what they want, and the audience discounts it accordingly; most countries also regulate it for false claims, which is more than can be said of political speech. That is why advertising is usually not propaganda in the strict sense, even though it uses Bandwagon, Testimonial, Transfer, Glittering Generalities, Plain Folks, and Card Stacking all day long. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis illustrated its seven devices of 1937 with advertisements as readily as with speeches, and this site does the same.

Advertising crosses into propaganda when the disclosure fails. Native Advertising is dressed as journalism; undisclosed influencer endorsements are testimonials with the payment hidden; the front group runs issue advertising under a name that conceals the sponsor. The question to ask of any advertisement is the one the law asks: who paid, and is it clear.

Compare propaganda and persuasion.