Classified advertising is a form of advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Advertisements in a newspaper are typically short, as they are charged for by the line, and one newspaper column wide.

Publications printing news or other information often have sections of classified advertisements; there are also publications which contain only advertisements. The advertisements are grouped into categories or classes such as "for sale - telephones", "wanted - kitchen appliances", and "services - plumbing", hence the term "classified".

Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, and are mostly placed by private individuals with single items they wish to sell or buy.

Overview

Classified advertisements are usually charged for according to length; the publications in which they appear may be sold or given away free of charge. Advertisements usually comprise text with no graphics, and may be as short as a statement of the article on sale or wanted and a telephone number, or may have more information such as name and address, detailed description of the item or items ("red woman's sweater, V neck, size 10, slightly used, good condition"). There are usually no pictures or other graphics, although sometimes a logo

Logo

A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...

 may be used.

Classified advertising is called such because it is generally grouped within the publication under headings classifying the product or service being offered (headings such as Accounting, Automobiles, Clothing, For Sale, For Rent, etc.) and is grouped entirely in a distinct section of the periodical, which makes it distinct from display advertising

Newspaper display advertising

Newspaper display advertising is a form of newspaper advertisement - where the advertisement appears alongside regular editorial content. Display ads are generally used by businesses and corporations towards promotion of their goods and services and are generally for larger budget clients.Newspaper...

, which often contains graphics or other art work and which is more typically distributed throughout a publication adjacent to editorial content.

A hybrid of the two forms — classified display advertising — may often be found, in which categorized advertisements with larger amounts of graphical detail can be found among the text listings of a classified advertising section in a publication. Business opportunities

Business opportunity

A business opportunity involves the sale or lease of any product, service, equipment, etc. that will enable the purchaser-licensee to begin a business. The licensor or seller of a business opportunity usually declares that it will secure or assist the buyer in finding a suitable location or...

 often use classifieds to sell their services, usually employing 1-800 numbers

Toll-free telephone number

A toll-free, Freecall, Freephone, 800, 0800 or 1-800 number is a special telephone number which is free to the calling party, and instead the telephone carrier charges the called party the cost of the call...

. Classified and classified display ads are used by many companies to recruit

Recruitment

Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...

 applicants for jobs.

Printed classified ads are typically just a few column lines in length, and they are often filled with abbreviations to save space and money.

Developments

In recent years the term "classified advertising" or "classified ads" has expanded from merely the sense of print advertisements in periodicals to include similar types of advertising on computer services, radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, and even television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, particularly cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 but occasionally broadcast television as well, with the latter occurring typically very early in the morning hours.

Like most forms of printed media, the classified ad has found its way to the Internet.

Internet classified ads do not typically use per-line pricing models, so tend to be longer. They are also searchable, unlike printed material, tend to be local, and may foster a greater sense of urgency as a result of their daily structure and wider scope for audiences. Because of their self-policing

Self-policing

Self-policing, a form of self-regulation, is the process whereby an organization is asked, or volunteers, to monitor its own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a governmental entity monitor and enforce those standards.-To the...

 nature and low cost structures, some companies offer free classifieds internationally. Other companies focus mainly on their local hometown region, while others blanket urban areas by using postal code

Postal code

A postal code is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. Once postal codes were introduced, other applications became possible.In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems...

s. Craigslist.org

Craigslist

Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....

 was one of the first online classified sites, and has grown to become the largest classified source, bringing in over 14 million unique visitors a month according to comScore Media Metrix. A growing number of sites and companies have begun to provide specialized classified marketplaces online, catering to niche market products and services, such include boats, pianos, pets, and adult services, amongst others. In many cases, these specialized services provide better and more targeted search capabilities than general search engines or general classified services can provide.

A number of online services called aggregators crawl and aggregate classifieds from sources such as blogs and RSS

RSS

-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

 feeds, as opposed to relying on manually submitted listings.

Additionally, other companies provide online advertising services and tools to assist members in designing online ads using professional ad templates and then automatically distributing the finished ads to the various online ad directories as part of their service. In this sense these companies act as both an application service provider

Application service provider

An application service provider is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network. Software offered using an ASP model is also sometimes called On-demand software or software as a service ....

 and a content delivery platform

Content Delivery Platform

A content delivery platform is a software as a service content service, similar to a content management system , that utilizes embedded software code to deliver web content...

. Social classifieds

Social classifieds

Social classifieds is a form of classified advertising in the online medium on social networking websites. Most of such advertisements are free for the use of members of the respective social network. Various social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Friendster etc...

 is niche that is growing in online classified ads.

Statistics

In 2003 the market for classified ads in the United States was $15.9 billion (newspapers), $14.1 billion (online) according to market researcher Classified Intelligence. The worldwide market for classified ads in 2003 was estimated at over $100 billion. Perhaps due to the lack of a standard for reporting, market statistics vary concerning the total market for internet classified ads. The Kelsey Research Group listed online classified ads as being worth $13.3 billion, while Jupiter Research provided a conservative appraisal of $2.6 billion and the Interactive Advertising Bureau listed the net worth of online classified revenue at $2.1 billion .

Newspaper's revenue from classifieds advertisements is decreasing continually as internet classifieds grow. Classified advertising at some of the larger newspaper chains dropped by 14% to 20% in 2007, while traffic to classified sites grew by 23%.

As the online classified advertising sector develops, there is an increasing emphasis toward specialization. Vertical market

Vertical market

A vertical market is a group of similar businesses and customers that engage in trade based on specific and specialized needs. Often, participants in a vertical market are very limited to a subset of a larger industry...

s for classifieds are developing quickly along with the general marketplace for classifieds websites. Like search engines, classified websites are often specialised, with sites providing advertising platforms for niche market

Niche market

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact...

s of buyers of sellers.