Classified Advertising

Development

The term classified emerged in the nineteenth-century newspapers because it generally grouped [Page 311]together small ads within the publication under headings classifying the product or service being offered. Thus, ads were grouped into distinct categories in one section of the newspaper, distinguished from the larger illustrated “display ads.” The latter, interspersed with editorial content, were generally placed by businesses or individuals engaged in at least some moderate-sized enterprises.

There were subtle changes in style over the years. While “want ads” became a category by 1835–36, led by the New York Morning Herald in 1848, the practice of placing a small illustration cut in the top left corner of ads as a categorizing tool was discarded in favor of classifieds with the first line set in small capital letters. The only difference for the next century was that only the first or index-word was capitalized, for example, “HOUSE for Sale.”

Gilbert Gundersen, in The Story of Classified Ads, notes that by the 1920s, one could see readers turn to the back pages of a newspaper, preferring to peruse the classified section before reading through the headlines of the day. For the man out of work, the most vital section of the paper was found in the “Help Wanted” classifieds.

During World War II, help-wanted advertising increased dramatically as men left jobs to enter the armed forces. This left a tremendous number of jobs that needed to be filled. During July 1943, for instance, the Chicago Tribune noted that such ads had swelled its classified section to the point where 51 percent of the newsprint consumed that month was devoted to classified ads. Because of the war, newsprint was at a premium; yet the Chicago newspaper wished to maintain its dominance as a classified medium. The solution combined switching to a nine-column format and using smaller type. This actually increased the average number of revenue lines per column by 20 percent.

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