For all the sophistication of 21st Century advertising, for all the bells and whistles of the internet, Web 2.O, even Web 3.0 some things change very little. 

The first ads were vocal: chaps would sell their wears by shouting at passersby. The Romans for their part made much use of posters to advertise circuses and gladiator matches. Ditto the Carthaginians. The Middles Ages saw much the same thing, except that now the poster boasted drawings (i.e. illustration) as well as copy to tempt customers.

The first newspaper ad appeared in 'The Weekly Newes' (sic) in 1622. It was for an ad for the return of a stolen horse. Whether the said horse was found, no one knows. (Research and data would mercifully come later.)

In 1630, a Paris doctor opened a shop where you could post an ad for 3 sous. By the mid-1600s many such offices existed. This was the birth of modern advertising. By 1661, brands were rearing their ugly head or pretty head, depending on your point of view. One Robert Turner took out an ad in 1661 to advertise dentifrice.

During Black Death, newspapers were awash with ads for cures: Pestilential Pills, Incomparable Drink Against the Plague, The Only True Plague Water, Infallible Preventive Pills Against the Plague, and Sovereign Cordials Against the Corruption of the Air.

When, in 1666, the London Gazette announced they would henceforth print adverts, they became all the rage. By 1682, shopping guides were being published, the great, great great grandfather of the Argos catalogue.
Throughout the 18th century London would be buried beneath a mountain of posters advertising all manner of things. Such was the craze for these signs that Charles II proclaimed, "No signs shall be hung across the streets shutting out the air and the light of the heavens."

Fast forward to America in the late 18th c.  As well as helping to draft the Declaration of Independence, and generally being a bit of a genius inventing things like bi-focals, Benjamin Franklin also was blazing a trail in advertising.  He published the Pennsylvania Gazette (1st issue 1729), which carried ads for soap, books, and stationery. Franklin wrote an ad for his newly invented stove which warned people that their teeth and jaws would go bad, their skin would shrivel, their eyes would fade, and assorted other woes would befall them if they continued to use old-fashioned stoves. 

As we advance into the 19th century the landscape is becoming ever more familiar. Whereas hitherto press ads had just been copy-based, now illustrations would be used. The great P. T. Barnum refined the dark art of advertising yet further with his sensational promotional campaigns for Tom Thumb, the Feejee Mermaid, and singer Jenny Lind. Barnum delivered lectures on "The Science of Money-Making and the Philosophy of Humbug," a text which many in advertising would do well to read now.

Now the Age of the Brand is truly upon us. In 1871, there were 121 brand names registered at the Patent Office; by 1875, there were 1,138; by 1926, there were 69,000.  By 1882, the first electric sign was made and displayed by W. J. Hammer in London. One ad featured a chariot race made out of 20,000 light bulbs which flashed 2,500 times per minute. Magazine adverts abounded. Scroll on a bit, and we have Lily Langtry and Pear's Soap (the first of a long line of celebrity endorsements), ad agencies are springing up everywhere and in 1894 ads for pills were projected onto Nelson's Column by means of a magic lantern.
 And the rest, as they say, is history.