Analysis of information source is important scientific methods of historical geography. The article proposes the methodology and results of scientific analysis
of specific categories of information sources – advertisements in publications beginning of the twentieth century as iconographic documents.
Scientometric analysis of advertisements in Katerynoslav periodical editions of the early twentieth century gives an objective picture of the state and structure of socio-geographical complex in South-Eastern Ukraine in the specified period of history, allows determining the factors of industrial development and the formation of the region as a powerful economic center.
Keywords: iconographic information sources, analysis of information source, advertising, historical periodicals, social and geographical complex, history of formation of the economic complex.