Every ad you see is designed to sell you something. It might be a product, or a company, or a school, or an idea. The effectiveness of the ad depends upon how well it targets and reaches an identified audience. Advertising copy (or text) has to catch and keep your attention, so it must use powerful writing.

Advertising can be found in many different forms and publications: radio commercials, television ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, flyers, handbills, bumper stickers, billboards, brochures, buttons and so on. The copywriter must know the product well, select its outstanding features, identify the target audience and decide on the format. In the professional world of advertising, copy is complemented with design and layout work created by professional graphic artists. As a student, however, if you wish to compose a video or print ad, for instance, you'll need to be your own designer and video director/editor.

Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook suggests that advertising copywriting

• uses concise, powerful structures
• frequently employs fragments, even single words or short phrases written as if they were sentences
• relies on imagery, sound and word play
• relies heavily on psychological appeals
• may be limited in number of words by space allowed in the overall layout or by seconds allowed in the commercial
• frequently relies on titles, headings, captions, or words and phrases otherwise appearing in different sized print to attract attention to main ideas
• studiously avoids any excessive verbal structures
• may include paragraphs which act as thought groups not paragraphs in the traditional expository sense

More information about advertising and writing for radio and television can be found in the classroom copies of Webster's New World Student Writing Handbook. Check out these web sites as well: Copywriting Basics and Broadcast Media Ad Copy Tips.

An interesting site on the beginnings of advertising has been mounted at Duke University: Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920.