As the 20th century was coming to a close, Advertising Age in 1999 launched a major project to chronicle the history of the era's advertising industry. The years from 1900 to 1999 were, in fact, when the advertising business came of age as a core economic and cultural force that shaped much of our daily life as well as the identity of our society.

This year-long history research project ultimately came to involve the whole of the national Ad Age organization in an effort to document and tell the story of those ten colorful and momentous decades. The end result was 136-page special edition of Advertising Age called "The Advertising Century."

Among its most interesting and meaningful contents were lists and articles outlining the 20th century's top 100 advertising campaigns, top 100 advertising people, top 10 jingles, top 10 slogans, top 10 advertising icons, and a timeline of the century's most important advertising-related events.

295-year timeline
In this Web site, the timeline evolved into an interactive document covering 295 years of the primary events in the history of American advertising from 1704, when the first newspaper advertisement was published, to 1999 when Internet advertising reached the $2 billion-a-year mark.

The print edition quickly sold out and became one of the most remembered and sought after issues ever published in the 75-year history of Advertising Age. Today, paper copies of the report are extremely difficult to find.

The goal of this "Advertising Century" Web site is to again make the major sections of that popular 1999 print report available to the public. By clicking into the items in the upper right hand navigation bar, you can browse at leisure through the online version of the "Advertising Century" and learn about our industry's most meaningful people, events, trends, issues, controversies and advertising executions.