Christian Little

It would certainly seem that it has come a very long way since it first started out, but just how far has it really managed to come?

The real truth is that advertising in its own right dates back thousands of years and the Egyptians are known to be the real inventors. Egyptians have always been known as famous inventors but this has surely got to go down as one of their best inventions.. Of course they needed to invent paper before advertising came in and they did this in the form of papyrus. The Egyptians then did something that was quite remarkable, they started to write down advertisements on this paper and post it around the cities. Advertising then grew on from this and now (thanks to the Egyptians) we see it in its current form.

Commercial messages and political campaign messages were found within the ruins of Pompeii and advertising used often in both Ancient Greece and Rome.The middle ages also used advertising but because many of the people couldn’t read they invented the image form of advertising so people would know which shop was which.Town criers were also introduced to advertise things such as fruit and vegetable carts.

Leap forward many years and you get to the stage in which door to door salesmen started doing the rounds and then came the invention of the radio in which companies were able to do short advertisements on between music and talk. The next revolution in advertising was of course the television, which in turn heralded the design agency which began to appear.

If you look ahead once more you can start to see the shocking way advertising has grown, it has now gone into almost every sector from public transport to schools. We have also seen a range of different formats, from direct marketing to twist banner stands – all a natural part of the evolution of advertising.

How far can advertising go? With every new piece of technology advertising seems to sneak its way into the world, so be prepared to start seeing it get a lot worse.