Advertisement is the difficult business of bringing information to great numbers of people.The purpose of an advertisement is to make people respond to make them react to an idea，such as helping prevent forest fires，or to make them want to buy a certain product or service.At the beginning of the 20th century，advertisement was described as“salesmanship in print”.If this definition were expanded to include radio and television，it would still stand today.The most effective way to sell something is through person-to-person contact.But the cost of person-to-person selling is high because it takes a great deal of time，and it increases the cost of the product or service.Advertising distributes the selling message to many people at one time.The first printed advertisement in the English language appeared in 1278，more than a century before Shakespeare’s first play was produced.This early advertisement was the work of William Caxton，England’s first printer，who used it to advertise religious books from his own workshop Caxton posted small printed notices along London’s main streets．Besides advertising his product，he identified his shop with a red-striped shield(盾形徽章)so that customers could find it easily． This same sort of simple informational advertising is still used.Examples are the roadside signs that tell travelers that they can buy fresh corn just down the road or that there is a restaurant in the next town. The Industrial Revolution，in the 18th and 19th centuries，brought a new kind of advertising.Large factories took the place of small workshops and goods were produced in large quantities. Manufacturers used the newly built railroads to distribute(递送)their products over wide areas.They had to find many thousands of customers in order to stay in business.They couldn’t simply tell people where shoes or cloth or tea could be bought---they had to learn how to make people want to buy a specific product. Thus modern advertising was born． Advertising created new markets and helped to raise standards of living as people came to feel that they had a right to new and better products. 小题1:The passage mainly talks about .
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