2. Meaning of Advertising The term advertising is derived from a Latin word ‘advertere’, which means to turn attention towards a specific thing. The dictionary meaning of the word advertising is to announce publicly or to give public notice. In other words, it may be interpreted aso attract the attention of the people concemed to a specific message which has been announced by the advertiser. In this way, advertising is tuning the attention of the people towards products, services, ideas by an identified sponsor. Advertising is used for communicating business information to the present and prospective customers. It provides information about the advertising firm, features ofits products, qualities, place of availability ofits products, different schemes offered, benefits of using its product etc. Advertising is {important for both buyers and sellers. It is important for the buyers as they get information regarding avaiability ofthe product, method of using the product and can have wider choice while buying a product. Itis imporrant for the seller as they can communicate with large number of target audience withthe help of advertising. It is a means of mass-communication, and a powerful marketing tool. ‘The simplest mezning of an advertisementis that itis a public announcement. In eatlier times, to advertise meant to announce publicly. Some advertisements even today Just inform the public e.g. Direct mail is defined as follows: Personally addressed advertising, delivered through the post. ‘The key factor here is the personal address ~ in general, we are talking about 4 named individual, at a specific postal address. This may be either ‘someone’s home (consumer direct mail), or work (business-to-business direct mail), In other words, direct mail involves a letter of some description, sent by an ‘advertiser’ (that is, a company selling a product or service) to an identified individual potential purchaser. An acceptable ahernative definition might be ‘one-to-one advertising in an envelope’. “The post’, which in the UK effectively means the Royal Mail, conjures up rich historical images of quill pens and parchment, of Penny Black stamps, sealing wax, coaches and horses and, later, steam trains and mailbags; these days, however, we are more likely to be talking about optical character recognition (OCR) of addresses, mechanized sorting procedures and sophisticated distribution networks (road, rail and air). Direct mail is unusual among advertising media for its reliance on few (and, in some countries of the world, monopoly) suppliers, that is, the Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Administrations (the PTT’), the postal services of the country of dispatch and delivery. Mailings of quantities in