Summary

The evolution of advertising has experienced some major milestones over the years, as it’s had
to adapt and change to suit new mediums and audiences constantly. It seems that the first
publicity claim of this nature was written on papyrus and came from Egypt, this one dates from
the year 1000 BC and is kept in the British Museum. In Greece, the first sound logo appeared in
the 8th century BC. and in England, the first printed pamphlet announcing the sale of a prayer
book appeared in the fifteenth century of the current era. Since then, the evolution of advertising
has been unstoppable; going from simple advertisements to recruit soldiers in the mid-17th
century to advertisements on balloons, automobiles, electrical advertisements ... Most
significantly, it’s become much more personalized throughout history. The one medium that’s
had the biggest impact on the history of advertising and advertising personalization is the
internet, and its ability to collect billions of data points on users.

1. Traditional Advertising

The pre-internet days were the days when advertising was about infomercials on radio, old
televisions, and billboards. This was the golden era of advertising, when the whole movement
was considered a huge part of society. The use of advertising gained popularity during the 18th
century.

For some time, the newspaper was the only way for producers to tell the consumers what they
had to offer, but then came the age of the radios. This not only made it possible to reach a much
larger audience, but it also made it easier to communicate the message much more quickly.
People were not used to this at all because there was nothing like this at the time, so they
associated the advertiser with the content that they believed the advertiser was the author of it.
The next phase was television. Television commercials were born and the whole advertising
world changed. Now that the public was familiar with the format of advertisements, they knew
what they were looking at when they saw it on TV. It was welcomed because everyone saw the
commercials as an opportunity to learn about what was available for them to buy.
A common method to create advertisements was to build characters in order to fabricate a
semblance of connection between viewers and brands and famous faces were brought to sell
everything from washing machines to cigarettes. Some examples of these characters are: Tigre
Tony, Melvin from Choco Krispies, Capn Crunch, and the Marlboro Man.

2. Modern Advertising (Internet)

Advertising as a whole during the 21st century found one new avenue in which companies can
advertise and show their products to a great part of today’s population: the internet. With this
new medium, reaching a bigger number of people has become much easier than it was in the
past.

Advertising on the internet began in the early 1990s. During this time, users of the internet
tended to visit specific websites that they purposely searched for; these could be governmental
websites, search directories, and online discussion forums. In 1994, after the development and
usage of HTML, more sophisticated websites started being created and used as a result. It is
during this time that companies saw an opportunity to start advertising their products or services
for the users that visited these pages. This is when the first internet ad was developed, in the
form of “banner ads” at the top and/or bottom of the websites. This can be seen as the most
primitive form of the online ad, and it has seen many forms since then. Some of these include
the pop-up ad and paid search ads.

Since the 1990s, both the internet and advertising techniques have evolved hand in hand and
have reached the point we see today. Nowadays, ads on the internet are all over the place. In
social media sites, they show up constantly on the sides of the page, above posts or below
posts. Even posts themselves can be advertisements. Companies now seek content creators
that have big platforms online and ask them to promote their products to their audience, which is
one of the newest ways advertising has evolved in recent years. In video streaming sites like
YouTube or Twitch, it is commonplace to see ads before, during and after a video. This has led
people to believe that ads on the internet have become too invasive, which has led to the
creation of ad blockers for online browsers. These blockers completely eliminate most ads from
your view, so you have a smoother browsing experience on the internet in general. This can be
most noticeable as a daily user of sites like YouTube.. Since the point of ads nowadays is to
generate clicks and the companies get paid for every user that sees or clicks on an ad online,
ad blockers completely demolish this idea. This has made some companies engage in lawsuits
against certain ad blockers, citing the complete obsolescence of a business model that many
companies rely on in the internet era.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that advertising has suffered many changes during its
development. This is because of technology, and many advertising techniques to engage more
people to buy as a consequence of a thirst of big industries to make more money. Advertising
might have its advantages and disadvantages, but it is something essential for the world
economy.

Transcriptions
Evolution: ˌ/ɛvəˈluʃən/
Traditional: /trəˈdɪʃənəl/
Modern: /ˈmɑdərn/
Audience: /ˈɑdiəns/
Internet: /ˈɪntərˌnɛt/
Television: /ˈtɛləˌvɪʒən