The relationship between Advertising can be an   advertising and its symbols is annoying, even oppressive, more complicated than intrusion into our lives, but sponsorship agreements and it also seems to have sellouts to corporations. become a “natural” part of our popular culture’s landscape. Millions of people happily  purchase and don clothing decorated with Nike swooshes, soft drink logos, NFL sports team symbols, university names, Disney characters, or the clothing’s designer name. Others delight in a McDonald’s jingle or Geico’s lizard ads or admire the daring design of Calvin Klein print ads. Today, ads are scattered  everywhere—and they Chameleon-like,  are multiplying. advertising adapts to most media forms. At local theaters and on rented DVDs, advertisements now precede the latest Hollywood movies. Ads take up more than half Dotting the nation’s   the space in most daily highways, billboards newspapers and consumer promote fast-food and hotel magazines. chains while neon signs announce the names of stores along major streets They are inserted into trade  and strip malls. books and textbooks. They clutter Web sites on  According to the Food the Internet.  Marketing Institute, the typical supermarket’s They fill our mailboxes and  shelves are filled with thirty wallpaper the buses we thousand to fifty thousand ride. different brand-name packages, each functioning like miniature billboards. Without consumer advertisements, mass  communication industries would cease to function in their present forms. Advertising is the economic glue that holds  most media industries together. Yet despite advertising’s importance to the  economy, many of us remain skeptical about its impact on American life. The earliest media ads were in the form of handbills,  posters, and broadsides (long newsprint-quality posters). English booksellers printed brochures and bills  announcing new publications as early as the 1470s, when posters advertising religious books were tacked on church doors. In 1622, print ads imitating the oral style of criers  began appearing in the first English newspapers. Announcing land deals and ship cargoes, the first  newspaper ads in colonial America ran in the Boston News- Letter in 1704. The first American In 1841, Volney Palmer   advertising agencies were opened the first ad really newspaper space agency in Philadelphia; brokers: individuals who for a 25 percent purchased space in commission, he worked newspapers and sold it to for newspaper publishers various merchants. and sold space to advertisers. Newspapers, accustomed to  a 25 percent nonpayment rate from advertisers, welcomed the space brokers, who paid up front. In return, brokers usually  received discounts of 15 to 30 percent but sold the space to advertisers at the going rate. Originally called the  Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company back in 1869, the Campbell Soup Co. introduced its classic red and white soup can labels in 1897 after an employee was inspired by the uniforms of the Cornell University football team. Today, the label looks  different, but Campbell’s red and white cans remain one of the most recognized brands in the country. By the end of the 1800s,  patent medicines and department stores dominated advertising copy, accounting for half of the revenues taken in by ad agencies. During this period, one-sixth  of all print ads came from patent medicine and drug companies. Such ads ensured the financial survival of numerous magazines, as “the role of the publisher changed from being a seller of a product to consumers to being a gatherer of consumers for the advertisers.”6 Many contemporary products, in fact, originated as  medicines. Coca-Cola, for instance, was initially sold as a medicinal tonic and even contained traces of cocaine until 1903, when that drug was replaced by caffeine. Early Post and Kellogg’s cereal ads promised to cure  stomach and digestive problems. Many patent medicines made outrageous claims about  what they could cure, leading ultimately to increased public cynicism. As a result, advertisers began to police their ranks and  develop industry codes to restore customer confidence. Partly to monitor patent medicine claims, the Federal Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906.