Are advertisement and publicity the same thing?

Answer 1

Advertising is paid for, hence it is a commercial transaction. Publicity is any form of commercially significant news about a product, an institution, a service or a person published in space or radio that is not paid for by the sponsor Advertising is a paid form of publicity. Publicity is not a commercial feature.

Secondly, advertising is non personal Whatever be the form of advertisements (visual, spoken or written,) they are directed at a mass audience and not directly at the individual as in the case of persona; selling.

Thirdly, advertisements are identifiable with their sponsor or originator, which is not always the case with publicity or Propaganda. Though the terms advertising and publicity are different in the field of marketing, both are generally used interchangeably. Advertising i openly sponsored or initiated. The advertiser takes the steps to get the advertisements published or the poster pasted or the radio or television commercial skit written and so on. But in the case of publicity the initiative may be taken even by the publisher without any sponsor coming forward. For example the commercial news papers or magazines may write an editorial or give a report about the merits of a new ting discovered if it is of interest to business men. But the discoverer of that device might have not sought such publicity at that time. The information is published as a news time bu the publisher and hence it comes under publicity and not under advertising. Hut if the discoverer pays to the publisher the step will be counted as Advertising. Sometimes names of various firms and their products, their merits and uses are mentioned casually in fiction, story books by the authors, the commodities no doubt get some publicity. But this is not advertising. But if the manufacturer pays for such stories, he is advertising is products through stories. From the view point of the general public both publicity and advertising mean the same thing.