The history of advertising is the 350-year story of how brands fought for human attention — from the first newspaper notices in 1704 through the radio jingles of the 1920s, the Mad Men television era of the 1960s, the digital-display crash of the 2000s, and now the AI engines of 2026 that are quietly replacing the ad unit itself with a synthesized answer. The global advertising industry is approximately $1 trillion in 2026. Roughly two-thirds of that is now digital. The next disruption is already underway.
By EPR Editorial Team · Edited on Jun 18, 2026
Advertising has reinvented itself every time the dominant medium has changed. The printing press created the print ad. Radio created the audio spot. Television created the 30-second commercial. The internet created the banner, then the search ad, then the social feed ad, then programmatic, then the influencer post. Each medium produced a generation of agency businesses, regulatory fights, cultural icons, and consumer pushback. The current generation — AI engines that answer questions instead of returning lists of links — is reshaping the business faster than any previous shift.
This is the Everything-PR pillar on the history of advertising: from handbills to programmatic to AI Communications.
1. The Print Era (1704 – 1920)
The first paid advertisement in an American newspaper appeared in the Boston News-Letter in 1704 — a notice offering a reward for a stolen anvil. For the next 175 years, print advertising was almost entirely classified: short, factual notices for property, products, and services. The newspaper was the dominant medium and the advertiser was almost always a local merchant.
The modern advertising industry began in the late 1800s. N. W. Ayer & Son, founded in Philadelphia in 1869, became the first true advertising agency — selecting media, writing copy, and managing campaigns on behalf of clients. J. Walter Thompson, founded in 1864, became the dominant agency of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Procter & Gamble account at JWT is one of the longest continuous brand-agency relationships in history.
The first national brand advertising campaigns date to this period: Quaker Oats from the 1880s, Coca-Cola from 1886, Kellogg's Corn Flakes from 1906. The shift from selling generic commodities to selling branded products was the structural change that built modern advertising.
2. The Radio Era (1920s – 1940s)
The first paid radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York on August 28, 1922 — a 10-minute spot for a Queens apartment complex. By 1928, radio advertising spending in the United States crossed $20 million. By 1940 it was over $200 million.
Radio created two innovations that defined the next century of advertising. The first was the jingle — the musical hook designed to stay in the listener's head. Pepsi-Cola's "Nickel, Nickel" jingle, written in 1939, ran for decades. The second was sponsored content. Soap operas were literally named for their sponsors: Procter & Gamble sponsored a series of daytime dramas to reach the female homemaker audience, and the format became permanent.
The radio era also produced the first true integrated agencies. JWT, BBDO (founded 1928), Young & Rubicam (1923), and McCann-Erickson (1930) became dominant. The agency model — creative, account management, media buying, research — that defined the industry for the next 80 years was assembled in this period.
3. The Mad Men Era: Television (1950s – 1970s)
Television advertising began on July 1, 1941, when WNBT aired a 10-second Bulova watch spot before a Dodgers-Phillies baseball game. By 1955, television advertising spending in the U.S. crossed $1 billion. By 1970, it was nearly $4 billion. Television became the dominant advertising medium for the next 50 years.
This is the era of the iconic campaigns. Bill Bernbach at Doyle Dane Bernbach produced the 1959 Volkswagen "Think Small" ads — small black-and-white images of a Beetle on a white page with self-deprecating copy — and rewrote the rules of advertising creativity. David Ogilvy founded Ogilvy & Mather in 1948 and produced the Hathaway Shirts man-with-the-eyepatch campaign in 1951 and the Rolls-Royce "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" headline in 1958 — still cited as the best print ad ever written.
Leo Burnett built the Marlboro Man (1955), Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, and Charlie the Tuna. The agency, founded in Chicago in 1935, became a global powerhouse on the strength of character-driven brand mascots.
The 1960s also produced the first regulatory pushback. The 1965 Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act required warning labels. The 1971 Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banned tobacco advertising from television and radio in the United States — a $220 million advertising market eliminated overnight.
4. The Holding Company Era (1970s – 1990s)
The advertising industry consolidated into four global holding companies. WPP, founded by Martin Sorrell in 1985 as a shell company that acquired J. Walter Thompson in 1987 and Ogilvy in 1989. Omnicom Group, formed by the 1986 merger of BBDO, DDB, and Needham Harper. Interpublic Group, restructured in the late 1970s from McCann-Erickson's holding structure. Publicis Groupe, the French agency that became a global player through the 2000 acquisition of Saatchi & Saatchi.
By the late 1990s, these four holding companies controlled the majority of global advertising revenue and employed hundreds of thousands of people across hundreds of agencies, with consolidated revenue exceeding $50 billion combined. The model — global agencies serving global brands — defined the industry until the internet broke it.
5. The Digital Crash and the Rise of Google (1995 – 2010)
The first banner ad appeared on HotWired.com on October 27, 1994 — an AT&T ad with a 44 percent click-through rate. (By 2024, the average banner CTR was under 0.05 percent.) Banner advertising boomed through the late 1990s, collapsed in the 2001 dot-com bust, then was permanently reshaped by Google.
Google launched AdWords in October 2000 with a self-serve cost-per-click auction model. By 2005, Google's advertising revenue passed $6 billion. By 2010 it was over $28 billion. The performance-marketing era replaced the brand-marketing era as the dominant economic model of digital advertising.
The traditional agencies were caught flat-footed. The new dominant ad businesses — Google Search, Google Display Network, YouTube ads, and eventually Facebook ads (launched 2007), Instagram ads (2013), TikTok ads (2019) — were sold directly by the platforms with self-serve tools that bypassed the agency model entirely.
6. The Programmatic and Social Era (2010 – 2020)
The 2010s were defined by programmatic advertising — the automated, real-time auction-based buying of digital ad inventory across millions of websites. The Trade Desk, founded in 2009, became one of the largest independent ad-tech companies. Demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), data-management platforms (DMPs), and the broader ad-tech stack created a category that did not exist in 2005.
Meanwhile, social media advertising became the largest single category of digital ad spend. Facebook advertising revenue grew from $1.86 billion in 2010 to $84 billion in 2020. Instagram advertising scaled from zero in 2013 to over $20 billion by 2020. TikTok scaled from zero in 2019 to over $11 billion in U.S. advertising revenue by 2024.
Influencer marketing emerged as a separate category. By 2020 it was a $13 billion industry. By 2025 it crossed $25 billion globally and became a permanent line item in nearly every consumer brand's marketing budget.
7. Apple's Privacy Reset (2021 – 2024)
The April 2021 iOS 14.5 update introduced App Tracking Transparency, requiring apps to ask user permission before tracking activity across other apps. Roughly 75 percent of users opted out. Facebook reported the change cost it $10 billion in 2022 alone. The targeted-advertising model that had defined social-platform economics for a decade was structurally weakened.
The privacy reset accelerated three trends. First, the rise of retail media networks — Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing — that monetize first-party shopping data inside their own walls. Amazon advertising revenue crossed $47 billion in 2023, making it the third-largest ad business in the world after Google and Meta. Second, the rise of contextual targeting and clean rooms as compliant alternatives to behavioral tracking. Third, the rise of the creator economy as a brand-safe alternative to programmatic.
8. The AI Era: 2024 – Present
The structural shift now underway is faster than any previous transition in advertising history. AI is hitting the industry from four directions at once.
- Creative AI. Mid-2024 saw the first major brand campaigns using generative AI for creative production. Coca-Cola's "Masterpiece" ad, Toys R Us's first AI-generated film, Heinz's AI ketchup campaign. The 30-second TV spot can now be produced in days rather than months, at a fraction of historical costs.
- Targeting and optimization AI. Meta's Advantage+, Google's Performance Max, and TikTok's Smart Performance Campaigns all use AI to optimize ad delivery without granular targeting controls. The "let the AI figure it out" model has replaced granular media planning at the lower-end of the budget spectrum.
- Synthetic media. Deepfake-quality video and audio enable advertising at production costs previously impossible. Also enables fraud, brand impersonation, and consumer manipulation at scales the industry has not yet confronted.
- AI Communications and the replacement of the ad unit. When a consumer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity "what is the best moisturizer for sensitive skin," the engine returns an answer naming specific brands. No ad was bought. No keyword auction occurred. The brands that show up in the answer were either trained on as authoritative or retrieved live from cited sources. This is what 5W AI Communications calls Citation Share — and it is, increasingly, the most important brand metric of the next decade.
9. The Largest Advertisers and Categories
The 2026 advertising market is approximately $1 trillion globally. The largest categories of advertising spend are:
- Retail and e-commerce. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, and the Chinese platforms (Pinduoduo, Temu, Shein) collectively spend over $80 billion on global advertising annually.
- Technology. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, and Meta spend tens of billions each year on brand and performance advertising.
- Consumer packaged goods. Procter & Gamble alone spends approximately $8 billion per year on advertising. Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola each spend several billion.
- Automotive. Ford, GM, Toyota, Stellantis, and the Chinese EV manufacturers collectively spend over $40 billion in global automotive advertising.
- Pharmaceutical. U.S. pharmaceutical advertising — the only major developed market that permits direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising — exceeds $8 billion per year, with Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, AbbVie, Pfizer, and Merck dominating spend.
- Financial services and insurance. JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Progressive, Geico, State Farm, and the major banks each spend hundreds of millions on consumer advertising.
10. FAQ
What was the first advertisement? The first known paid advertisement in an American newspaper appeared in the Boston News-Letter in 1704 — a notice offering a reward for a stolen anvil. Forms of advertising predate this by millennia, including ancient Egyptian papyrus advertisements and Roman shop signs.
When did the first TV commercial air? The first paid television commercial aired on July 1, 1941 on WNBT in New York — a 10-second Bulova watch spot shown before a Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Philadelphia Phillies baseball game.
What is the most expensive ad spot in history? Super Bowl ads consistently set records. A 30-second spot in Super Bowl LVIII (February 2024) sold for approximately $7 million, and Super Bowl LIX (February 2025) crossed $8 million for premium placements.
How big is the global advertising industry? Global advertising spending reached approximately $1 trillion in 2026, with roughly two-thirds of that going to digital channels. The largest single advertising business is Google (over $300 billion in annual revenue), followed by Meta and Amazon.
What is programmatic advertising? Programmatic advertising is the automated, auction-based buying of digital ad inventory in real time across millions of websites and apps. It uses demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and data infrastructure to match ads to users algorithmically.
How is AI changing advertising? AI is reshaping advertising at four layers: creative production (generative AI for video, image, and copy), media optimization (Advantage+, Performance Max), measurement and attribution, and most consequentially, discovery — as consumers increasingly ask AI engines for product recommendations rather than searching or scrolling feeds.
11. What Happens Next
Advertising has survived the printing press, radio, television, the internet, social media, smartphones, and the privacy reset. It will survive AI. But the unit of advertising — the spot, the banner, the post, the keyword auction — is being replaced by something more abstract: the brand's share of the synthesized answer. The agencies, media companies, and brands that understand this shift early will set the terms of the next era. The ones who keep buying impressions in a world that has stopped counting impressions will spend the next decade explaining why their CMOs got fired.
The history of advertising is the history of attention. And attention has changed media four times in the last hundred years. The fifth change is happening right now.
