Since its very first beginnings, which are thought to date back to steel carvings made by the ancient Egyptians, advertising has constantly had to adapt and change to suit new mediums and an increasingly savvy audience.
But there’s been one medium that’s had a bigger impact on advertising than anything before it. The wonderful World Wide Web. The internet has revolutionized advertising in the most astounding way. Not only has it changed the way ads are broadcasted, but it’s changed the way consumers act towards them. Then: Traditional Advertising Let’s take things back to the pre-internet days. The days when advertising was carried out via cheesy infomercials on radio, fuzzy old televisions, and billboards. This was the golden era of advertising, when the whole movement was considered a huge part of society – almost taking on a cultural status. The first TV ad popped up on screens in 1941 in America – probably a lot later than you’d imagine. Before the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies played each other, viewers saw a brief commercial for Bulova clocks and watches. Such a small moment set the precedent for the next seventy years. Back then, adverts were a staunch part of society. Despite the 50s being a tense decade for America during the Cold War, TV viewers felt optimistic and were beginning to loosen their purse strings as prosperity began to rise. Characters were built around products to create a semblance of connection between viewers and brands (though this idea of a consumer connection didn’t become a priority until later), and famous faces were brought in to sell everything from washing machines to cigarettes. Take the Marlborough Man, for example, who became a recognizable cultural figure between the 1960s and 1990s. The aim was to turn filtered cigarettes from a feminine phenomenon to a more masculine one with the help of rugged cowboys and a stream of moody looking men. Even today it’s considered one of the best advertisement campaigns of all time. On television, products and characters began to go hand and hand. Let’s take cereal as an example. Think Tony the Tiger and Frosted Flakes, or the Snap, Crackle, and Pop gnomes for Rice Krispies – both of which are still going strong today. Despite the different characters and the vastly different selection of products that began to emerge, ads at this time had one purpose: to sell. Yes, these characters were central to the ads and played a major part in creating an ad culture for consumers, but the product was always at the forefront. It might have seemed like Tony the Tiger or the Marlboro Man were the epicenters of their aligning ad campaigns, but they simply served as a tool to sell, sell, sell. From a Passive to Active Consumer: The Biggest Changes Our TV experiences are still littered with traditional ads, but the times are quickly a-changing. More change has happened in the past 20 years in advertising than in the previous 2,000 years, when ancient Egyptians would etch public notices into steel, right up until the 80s when ads were a form of culture of sorts. What has so drastically changed the ad landscape? We’re living in the ad-blocker age Audiences are actively choosing not to have to sit through commercials or be bombarded with ads while they browse the internet. We only have to look at the rise of apps that stop ads from showing up, and the emergence of pay-to-stream platforms like Netflix. Yep, people are actively choosing to pay to not have to sit through ads. This new trend of saying no to ads is thought to have cost publishers up to $22 billion (yes, billion) in revenue in 2015 – so it’s not to be taken lightly. Consumers are less trusting of commercials Millenials are the demographic of the moment, but they’re also the most skeptical when it comes to ads. A study by Forbes shows that they are extremely picky when it comes to who they will and won’t listen to. https://www.tintup.com/blog/history-evolution-advertising-marketing/ |
The Top 10 Most Famous
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|