The Advertisement.
What is an ad?
Merriam-Webster calls it "a public notice especially: one published in the press or broadcast over the air" and advertising, " the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements."
After asking 30 marketers this exact question (see Sources below), answers ranged from 'a medium', to 'a way', to 'an act', "an encapsulation of corporate ethos", "a marketing front", "marketing material", and even "a fine art".
Despite the wide-ranging language addressing advertisements, three things became clear.
Ads are:
- Paid
- Public
- Action-Invoking
What's unclear is the solid form ads take. Simonas Steponaitis (Hosting Wiki) offers a list of possible options: "television, newspapers, magazines, journals, radio, press, internet, direct selling, mailers, contests, posters, events, and even people."
So if ads have so many forms, they effectively have no form. In that case, since form follows function, function must be key to defining the concept.
History of the Advertisement.
4000 BCE. The year of our first recorded advertisement in the form of a wall painting in Africa. Ancient Egyptians used papyrus, Ancient Chinese used flute-backed poetry, passing stories of brilliant candies, eventually, stone tablets and copper plates became the norm, that is, until wooden signs took over, a staple that remains today. Finally, wood turned to plastic and plastic to silicon as the digital age took the reins. But those are merely materials.
Ads had wide-ranging uses from day one. Back in Ancient Africa, ads were used to communicate where good hunting grounds were, where predator and prey animals resided, and what to avoid when approaching them. While they weren't necessarily paid, they did require creators to gather energy-expensive resources such as berries and blood. In other ancient societies, town criers spread word of government announcements on the king's dime. And of course in a similar vein, governments used advertisements to sell bonds for war chests, glorify their military might, and vilify their political opponents i.e. they produced propaganda.
While past societies used advertising for many purposes, it wasn't until China's Song Dynasty (Europe's middle ages) when the Liu family needle shop printed world's first physical ad on bronze heLiu family transmuted advertising into a concrete form. Since then, advertisements have stayed essentially the same: pretty pictures and persuasive words. However, in the past decade or less, advertisements have touched back to their old roots becoming more about sharing value rather than sharing products.
The Advertisement Today.
To recap, the function of the ad is to allocate resources towards alerting the public about useful information of some kind- whether that's where to get food or where to get your clothing fixed- it solves a clear problem. The form of an ad is fluid. However information is moved, advertisements will take that form. Today, that form is primarily digital. Lending to the ease at which businesses can now create ad campaigns, false advertising and various forms of malignant propaganda have become commonplace. Though regulations have formed, it's only in the past year that any action has been taken to clean up the ad environment. Fortunately, in response to the messy, deceptive marketplace, many honest alternatives are forming: companies that make value-added their focus. But that's beyond the scope of this article.
In sum total, an advertisement is a simple concept. It's a method. A formless attempt to make people do what you want using, at the very least, words.
