Advertising, From the Newsagent's Window to the World Wide Web

By Mark Richards

One of the most enduring characteristics of the Internet is how that it has changed the way we look at the whole area of commercial advertising.

Many years ago my wife and I ran a business which involved distributing very large quantities of printed flyers to dwellings on a residential door-to-door basis on behalf of various restaurants, local tradesmen, self-styled nutritional experts and taxi cab operators.

Whilst even back then most residents failed to fully appreciate the benefits to them that the unsolicited arrival of wads of leaflets, cards and letters was supposed to bring, the rationale of it all was simple enough. Out of every thousand or so doors we called upon possibly a hundred leaflets would be viewed, even if only whilst en route to the waste paper bin (no recycling facilities in those days), twenty or so would be read and typically one or two would generate some business for the advertiser. This was enough to make the advertiser's efforts worthwhile after having covered the cost of having the leaflets printed and distributed.

A similar principle applied in the case of advertisements placed in the local newspaper. Most readers would pass them by, no matter how prominently they appeared, but the small number who read and heeded the message would make their insertion a profitable exercise irrespective of the often substantial cost of having them published.

One could argue that the placing of hand-written postcards in shop windows operated to a very different principle. Although the potential audience was a great deal smaller than was the case either with door-to-door leaflet delivery or newspaper advertising, they were there for the benefit of those people who did take the trouble to stop and read them. Thus there was no "nuisance factor", and the proportion of what we would today call "conversions" was therefore significantly higher.

Advertising on the web of course is a different game completely. Whilst some ads in online directories are free and others come at a price, what they do all have in common is that they can be viewed by anybody in the world who follows the appropriate links. The corner shop now sits, unpresumptuous, along the global super highway rather than at the junction of some residential back street in Richmond Upon Thames.

It was when I was browsing the classified ads in the window of a small shop in SW London recently that I found myself wondering whether it could be possible to combine the community spirit of the traditional cards in the window means of advertising with the global efficiency of the Internet.

An unobtrusive little shop occupying each and every corner of the world.

It is an intriguing thought, and just possibly one that is closer to becoming reality than some us may realise.


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