When the News began publishing in 1919, it had trouble attracting advertisers, other than employers looking to hire stenographers, sales clerks and laborers. The assumption was that the sort of people who would buy a picture tabloid were unlikely to have expendable income. The paper helped its cause with a marketing survey in the 1920s that showed that even residents of the Lower East Side tenement district had more expendable income than imagined and were avid consumers of products, including the occasional luxury product. The subsequent "Tell It To Sweeney" marketing campaign convinced advertisers that the paper reached a large, underserved market, the millions of "Sweeneys" who lived in apartments in the Lower East Side, the West Side, Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx or in modest homes on Staten Island or Nutley, NJ. Later the paper produced stats that showed it had a significant share of newspaper readers in the city's most affluent neighborhoods as well, running second in circulation to the Times in the silk-stocking blocks of the Upper East Side. In 1946 the News and The Times had the most profitable newspaper advertising bases in the city, the Times as the most efficient pathway to the affluent consumer and the News as the best way to reach the mass market. During the war, the News had to turn away advertisers because newsprint was rationed.
April 14 was the Sunday before Easter and the News was thick with ads for women's suits, dresses, hats and coats, despite the clothing shortage. Children's clothes were also much in evidence but very little menswear was advertised. With the weather warming up, furs were making their way to the bargain basement shops. While ads in theTimes emphasized the latest styles and luxuries, merchants courted the News readers with bargains. With price controls in effect and shortages the rule, there were no big Easter sales that year although the department stores heavily touted the cheap merchandise available in their bargain basements. With rationing and war production ended, appliances, housewares, automobiles and electronics were appearing on shelves again. Major Sunday News advertisers included the the moderate -priced department stores of Union Square like Hearns and Hecht's and the large mainstream Herald Square and midtown emporiums, including Macy's, Gimbel's, Sak's 34th Street and Bloomingdale's on the East Side. as well as some Fifth Avenue department stores like B. Altman's, Arnold Constable and the plus-sized shops Roaman's and Lane Bryan/. Among the missing were the upscale stores further north on Fifth Avenue, like Sak's Fifth Avenue, Bonwit's and Bergdorf's, the discount giant S. Klein on Union Square, and the many five-and-dimes of the day where many consumers made their day-to-day purchases. More surpisingly Wanamaker's, one of the major mid-price department stores, was also absent.
Several chain stores ran ads as did stores in the outer reaches of Manhattan, like Wertheimer's and Blumsteins, and the outer boroughs. . In addition to store ads, a diversity of products and services were advertised, several employers ran display ads and there were ads for upcoming Easter sunrise services, a reminder that there were still a sizable number of Protestants among the lower middle and working class in New York City in 1946.