ABSTRACT
Advertising is as old as selling itself. During the time of the ancient Roman Empire, criers were paid to scream out messages about products for sale. There were “print” ads, too: archeologists have found a three-thousand-year-old ad for a runaway slave that was written in Thebes on papyrus. In medieval England, shopkeepers often posted a boy or man at the entrance to their shop to shout at the top of his lungs about the goods in the store. Signs posted over shops also beckoned consumers. Centuries later, after the printing press came into use in England, businesses added handbills and newspapers to their advertising mix. This routine presence of advertising was transferred to the British colonies in the New World. By the time Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, advertisements were an expected and accepted part of almost all the day’s periodicals.
