History

history.   Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience to take some action. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand (TheCreator 2010). In ancient times, the most common form of advertising was by mouth, however, advertising has been present since 3000BC where Egyptians used Papyrus to make sale messages and wall posters (Rohit 2010). Throughout history, advertising has been present but since the turn of the 19th century and rise of mass production, we have witnessed the potentials of advertising. There are different types of medias which can be used to deliver the messages, including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail; or new media such as the internet.

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. When the practice of sponsoring programs was popularised, each individual radio program was usually sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business' name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows. However, radio station owners soon realised they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio station's broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single businesses per show. This practice was carried over to television the late 1940's and early 1950's.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers' eyes. " //The // //Volkswagen // //ad campaign—featuring such headlines as "Think Small" and "Lemon" (which were used to describe the appearance of the car)—ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a "position" or "unique selling proposition" designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer's mind" (Advertising 2010). //  This period of advertising was referred to as the //Creative Revolution. // 

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly //MTV // . Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in //for //  the advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought (GoArticles.com 2010). As cable and satellite television became more common in our society, specialty channels emerged which were entirely devoted to advertising such as //The Shopping Network. // 

Marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the " dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than overwhelm users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising (Business Administration 2007).