Commercials

Dating back as far as July 1941, when the first television commercial first appeared, commercials have used a wide variety of tactics from humor to fear and intrigue to inspire us to buy products or services. In their early inception, commercials frequently featured celebrities -- a trend that continued throughout advertising history, to gain consumer confidence and interest in a product. The most popular of these were for tobacco products, which were prominent throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

Expanding into the 1950s and 1960s were the earliest influxes of animated commercials. With cartoon characters selling products, advertisers hoped to reach a broader audience by using these impartial, comical and attention-grabbing methods to target both adults and children. Amongst some of the most early inceptions of animated commercials included characters from The Flintstones.

In the 1970s and 1980s, commercials began to evolve to target specific groups, as child-based advertising boomed. Toys, collectibles and more were huge hits as commercials on TV became catalysts of excitement, whose tactic was purely to get children to persuade their parents to purchase toys (known as the "Mommy, I want that!" age of advertising).TV commercials and toy lines became synonymous, thanks to television series including "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," which some argued to have existed purely to sell action figures. Series with similar toy like success rates included Transformers, Go-Bots and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Cross-promotions between TV commercials and other products, including cereal and collectibles, were used to sell other products licensed to the same franchise. Therefore, it became a common practice to sell toys via cereal box promotions, while also advertising the television show. This would all be advertised via a television commercial as well - a virtual triangle of advertising mediums.

With the inception of the internet and its popularity in the mid to late 1990s, cross-promotions between commercials and websites became a commonplace sight. With its first widespread debut, websites began their regular appearance on TV commercials in the late 1990s, and later became a standard fixture going forward. The social media boom of the early to mid 2000s brought forth a reciprocal advertising method, where amusing commercials were displayed on a website, in which the website was displayed on its corresponding TV commerical.

Public Service Announcements, or PSAs, became a frequent part of public programming. Whether locally or nationally, PSAs are usually government or organization-sponsored informative commercials that portray a specific message about safety, health or ethics. Famous examples of PSAs range from the "crying indian" PSA of the 1970s that gave a memorable message about pollution, to the numerous anti-drug and drinking and driving "shock and awe" PSAs of the 1980s, during a time where crack-cocaine abuse was increasing.

The internet age of advertising brought forth a new species of commercials: web-based commercials that appear on video ads, which either appear in regular ad placements directly on websites, or before or after an internet video plays. Videos that are displayed before online video content usually last a maximum of 15 seconds, and are typically "forced" up on the viewer to watch,  before the video they intended to see would be played.