Difference between Advertising and Publicity:

1. Advertising is paid form of ideas, goods and services while publicity is not paid by the sponsor.

2. Advertising comes from an identified sponsor while publicity comes from a neutral and impartial source.

3. Advertising is controllable by the organisation while publicity is not controllable because it comes from a neutral source.

4. Advertising is less credible in comparison to publicity while publicity is more credible because it comes from an impartial source.

5. Advertising is what you or your organisation says and promotes about you or your organisation but publicity is what others say for you or your organisation.

6. In advertising same content is repeated by the sponsor while in publicity it is not generally possible.

7. Advertising always carries a positive message about your organisation because it is the content you pay for but publicity can be positive or negative because it comes from an impartial source.

8. In advertising you have full chance to show your creativity but inpublicity creativity is limited because it comes from non paid source.

9. Advertising is targeted to the practicular audiences by the sponsor while in publicity it is not focused.

10. Most of the times in advertising social responsibility is ignored while in publicity special focus is given on social responsibility.

                                   Combination of both advertising and publicity is necessary.

The difference between PR and publicityMost PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.

But it's not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk aboutstorytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest you don't bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won't accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don't even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.