A Brief History of Media and Advertising

Last week, I introduced the idea that the cookie's demise in advertising portends a monumental shift in how advertising is conducted and might also foster a shift in the cultural landscape. By no longer enabling greater and greater degrees of segmentation, which is, in essence, an exercise in identifying, accentuating, and collecting differences, there may be a renewed focus on what makes us alike rather than what sets us apart. Not only can that be a boon to advertisers (I will get into how that is later in this series), but it could alter the media and messaging landscape in such a way as to broach social and cultural schisms that have been enabled by the cookie and its technology support system.

For the next few weeks, I will support this thesis by exploring the history of how we got to where we are. Once I've done that, I’ll explain why what I think should come next might come next. To do that, I need to start with a brief history of media and advertising.

The history of media is the history of human communication.

From grunts and screeches to the formation of words, the transition to literacy, and onwards to electronic media, people's moving expressions between each other have been fundamental human acts.[i] (Check out Walter J. Ong’s "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.”)

Nobody knows when the first commercial messaging was injected into the stream of interlocution, but it probably occurred at the birth of economies.

The oldest example of commercial communicative action—I mean an action with the primary goal of achieving mutual understanding among participants to get one participant to engage in a transaction with another—is from about 6,000 years ago. It’s an ancient Sumerian beer advertisement inscribed on a clay tablet. The ad reads something like: "Drink Elba Beer, the beer with the heart of a lion!"[ii].

The tagline feels like it could be for Löwenbräu.

Another ancient advertisement example is in a papyrus from Thebes, Egypt, around 3000 BCE. In it, a fabric seller named Hapu offers a gold coin reward for the return of a runaway enslaved person and promotes weaving services in the same posting.[iii] (It’s shocking just how many ads are placed over the millennia asking for the return, or information leading to the return, of slaves who have escaped bondage.)

Was this paid advertising as we know it today? Nobody can say.[iv] It is hard to imagine that if the messenger had something to gain, the carrier of that message would not have asked for some compensation in return. It isn’t too hard to imagine someone considering inserting an ad for “Ben’s Matzos” into the Ten Commandments.

In May 1704, The Boston Newsletter ran what are purported to be the first three paid advertisements in an American newspaper:  The ads called for the recovery of stolen goods, information about lost anvils, and even information about real estate available on Long Island, New York.

Throughout the 18th and into the 19th century, the printed word expanded throughout the Western world. First, the steam printing press in 1811 increased the amount of printing that could be done. In 1844, a method for making paper more easily using wood (it used to be made from fabric and pulped rags). In 1865, William Bullock perfected Hoe’s rotary press. Costs of materials, literacy, and the means of printing all came together. At this point, technology, materials, economics, and expanding class participation in broader society meet. A more significant availability of materials and lower friction in the means of transmission meant more content could reach more hands, which meant more content had to be produced. You bet your sweet-ass advertising went along for the ride.

When radio came along, the first “soap operas” in the 1930s were called that because companies like Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers were among the key sponsors.

The first television commercial aired in the United States on July 1, 1941. It was for Bulova, the watch and jewelry company, just before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. Twenty years later, television was the dominant advertising medium.

Through it all, advertising was there. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, some thought was given to targeted advertising. Consumer goods companies and retailers began to recognize the value of tailoring their advertising messages to specific population segments. This period saw the growth of mail-order catalog businesses, such as Sears, Roebuck, and Co., which collected customer addresses and purchases to segment and target their mailings effectively. In the 1910s, Charles Coolidge Parlin, often credited with being the first market researcher, conducted extensive research for the Curtis Publishing Company, analyzing consumer preferences and demographics to better target advertisements in publications such as "The Saturday Evening Post."

When TV expanded into every household throughout the 1950s and became the primary medium of the masses by the 60s, some demographic data was being used to target advertising.

However, one thing that remained true about advertising, from the dimmest memories of human expression to Jack Paar, was that while some level of targeting has always taken place using messages tailored to appeal to a particular audience, that message remained relatively general. Messages and images made to appeal to women versus men, for instance. However, the distinction between audiences was minimal because, at the end of the day, though the lady of the house might buy it, an advertiser wanted EVERYONE to have their soap. Regardless of who might be intended for the ad, everyone saw that message, whether it was meant for them or not. The available demographic information was used to help inform decisions, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that an advertiser could buy TV ad inventory based on adults 18-49. Ad delivery wasn’t segmented because the media landscape was not segmented. Except for some print vehicles addressing more particular audiences -- primarily special interests like science and mechanics, hunting and fishing, cooking, and cars – the media landscape was as homogeneous as a Finnish Starbucks.

All that started to change in the 1970s, when targeting and media planning -- enabled by improved data gathering, new technology, and a media and cultural landscape that started to fracture – came to prominence. When the “math men” first started standing on equal ground with the “mad men.”

Next time, the first stage of the rise of precision ad targeting.

[i] For more on orality, literacy, and ‘secondary orality,’ see Walter J. Ong’s "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.” Ong calls out the distinction between ‘orality,’ ‘literacy,’ and ‘secondary orality,’ which emerges in cultures with the presence of writing but have returned to oral-like modes of communication through technology, such as radio, television, and digital media.

[ii] This translation might vary slightly depending on the source, but the essence is that it promotes Elba beer as being strong or powerful, much like a lion's heart. This slogan advertises the product and conveys an image of strength and quality, appealing to potential consumers' desires for a superior beverage. This ancient advertisement, one of the oldest known, is a captivating glimpse into the early origins of advertising.

[iii] An interesting study would be how much early “advertising” focused on the recovery of stolen goods and, in particular, escaped slaves. It’s estimated that some 200,000 fugitive slave ads appeared in U.S. newspapers from 1730 to 1865. This dark underbelly of consumer capitalism is worthy of a deep dive if it hasn’t already been undertaken.

[iv] Unlike "Acta Diurna" in ancient Rome, these don't appear to be ads adjacent to other media. The “Acta Diurna” was a daily gazette posted in public places. They included announcements, news, and even personal messages that could be considered paid advertisements, such as notices for property sales, lost and found items, and other public notices.