The World’s First-Ever Advertisement

Advertising allows brands to communicate with potential customers. From the first page of our morning newspaper to interrupting our shows to breaking our Spotify playlists, ads have become the most integral yet annoying part of our lives! Today, we see different types of advertising, such as print, display, and digital. But do you know which was the world’s first-ever advertisement?

So if we think of ads in the past and the ads we see today, we will notice that they are more or less the same. But their forms are very different. Back in ancient times, sellers verbally advertised their products in the market. And we see evidence of that today too.

But soon, sellers found that carved signs and flags tended to work better, so advertising started evolving. With this background, let’s go look for the world’s first ad.

Soon after the agricultural revolution and settlements began, towns and cities developed. Commerce expanded, trade began and that is when advertising emerged. So it is said that the first ad in the world was of the ancient Chinese. The earliest advertising known was oral, as recorded in the Classic of Poetry (11th to 7th centuries BCE) of bamboo flutes played to sell candy. The first-ever written ad was found in the ruins of Thebes in Egypt. It was a Papyrus created in 3000 BC by a slaveholder trying to find a runaway slave while also promoting their weaving shop.

Although it is necessary to catch up on the new products of the ever-growing markets, ads have come down to being our patience tester! From its initial stages, advertisements have developed and emerged on all the possible platforms that a person can use and have been a greater platform for job opportunities!