History of Advertising
In ancient times, the most common form of advertising was word of mouth, but commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii.  Egyptians used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters, while lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common in Greece and Rome.  Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another display of an ancient media advertising form, which is still present now in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America.  As printing developed in the 15th & 16th century, advertising expanded to include handbills.  In the 17th century, advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England.  As the economy was expanding during the 19th century, the need for advertising grew at the same pace.  In the U. S., classified ads became popular, filling pages of newspapers with small print messages, promoting all kinds of goods.  The success of this advertising format led to the growth of mail-order advertising, like the Sears Catalog.  In 1843, the first advertising agency was established by Volney Palmer in Philadelphia.  At first the agencies were just brokers for ad space in newspapers, but by the 20th century, advertising agencies started to take over responsibility for the content also.  The 1960s saw advertising turn into a modern more scientific approach where creativity was allowed to show, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to the consumers' eyes.  The Volkswagen ad campaign featuring headlines like "Think Small" and "Lemon" brought 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 viewers' mind.  The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and especially MTV.  Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV brought a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertisement, other than it being a byproduct or afterthought.  As cable (and later satellite) television became increasingly common, "specialty" channels began to come about, and eventually entire channels, like QVC and Home Shopping Network and Shop TV, devoted to advertising merchandise, where again the consumer tuned in for the ads.  Marketing through the internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and led to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s.  Entire corporations operated only on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access.  At the turn of the 21st century, the search engine Google revolutionized online advertising by emphasizing relevant, low-key ads intended to help, rather than overwhelm, users.  This has led to an excess of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising.

The impact of advertising
"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." - John Wanamaker, father of modern advertising.  The impact of advertising has been a matter of considerable debate & many different claims have been made in different contexts.  During debates about the banning of cigarette advertising, a common claim from cigarette manufacturers was that cigarette advertising does not encourage people to smoke who would not otherwise.  The (eventually successful) opponents of advertising, on the other hand, claim that advertising does in fact increase consumption.  According to many media sources, the past experience & state of mind of the person subjected to advertising may determine the impact that advertisement has.  Children under the age of four may be unable to distinguish advertising from other TV programs, while the
ability to find the truthfulness of the message may not be developed
until the age of 8.