The Year 2020 is apt for reviewing the history of Advertising, for now we can view with 20/20 hindsight how this force – the glue that holds our lives together – came to assume its rightful place.  We are now also celebrating a full decade since the Great Advertising Awakening (GAA) of 2010, which miraculously occurred on the heels of the Two Dark Years (2008 and 2009) following the Great Crash of February 2008, in which Advertising was virtually abolished and civilization as we know it came precariously close to being destroyed.

To see the full picture, it is necessary to go back further than today's attention spans will reach – that is, to a year or two before the Crash of 2008.  Advertising was progressing but faced many ureasonable obstacles.  Barriers to freedom of Advertising existed in those days that are unthinkable in our enlightened age.  For instance, Ad messages had to be, for the most part, identified as such and could not be seamlessly integrated with other material.  Misguided laws actually required separation of Advertising and information – though these laws were rarely enforced, thanks largely to the freedom fighters of Madison Avenue.  On the Internet, Strategic Home Internet Targeting* accounted for a mere 50% or 60% of Web content, and some organizations were (legally, mind you) selling tools to consumers (who did not know what was good for them) to eliminate it. The Customer Recruitment and Assimilation Program, which now thrives blessedly without restraint, was being attacked by intellectuals with such force that recipients of this largesse were beginning to refer to it as "junk mail."  Some consumers were actually throwing these important documents away, even when they were clearly marked "Urgent!" "Important!" "You're Already a Winner!" and "Here's an Opporunity You Can't Afford to Miss!"

That is not all.  On television, Advertising was a minuscule 25% to 33% of content.  Difficult as this is to believe, some people paid extra to watch channels with little or no Advertising.  And, again, despite the dedicated efforts of Madison Avenue's freedom fighters, news and Advertising were treated as separate entities.  Worse yet, reactionaries were selling electronic devices that enabled consumers to skip over Advertising – and many were actually buying and using these machines.  In retrospect, it's a mystery that the whole economy didn't collapse then and there.  Most likely the advent in late 2006 of dual-layer digital Advertising, which permitted the insertion of a full program of subliminal Advertising beneath other content where machines could not detect it, saved the day.

In short, before the Great Crash of 2008, Advertising, though developing gradually, was being attacked by forces that threatened to prevent it from realizing its full potential.  As everyone now knows, the Great Crash was a moment in history of supreme irony.  Its immediate effect was disastrous, but, after two dark years in which Advertising was nearly eliminated, it ultimately brought about the Great Advertising Awakening.

The Great Crash occurred, of course, on Feb. 29, 2008, when some well-intentioned individual unleashed a giant adware program that crashed every computer in the world. Everything stopped working until global experts could bring systems back online.  After they did, people and world governments overreacted in what may be the worst example of mass hysteria in history.  Once the word was out that adware was responsible for the Crash, the world went berserk.  "Advertising brought us down!" people raved.  "Down with Advertising!"  Fearing for their lives, the Madison Avenue freedom fighters – the very people whose skill at influencing others could have restored sanity – went underground.  Lacking the wise counsel of Madison Avenue and its counterparts around the world, governments hastily and foolishly passed legislation banning, or seriously limiting, Advertising.  Thus began the horrible but fortunately brief period known as the Two Dark Years.

No sooner had the benevolent influence of Advertising been removed than chaos set in.  Without the guidance of Advertisers, people began buying at random or bought only what they needed.  Some cut their spending in half.  The appetite for luxuries and superfluities declined.  Markets crashed.  Millions of people suffered from malnutrition because they no longer had commercial breaks in which to get snacks.  People began to smell bad because they didn't buy deodorants, soaps, and fragrances or bought the wrong ones.  Health problems arose because people were clueless about what pharmaceuticals to buy.  The divorce rate climbed as men forgot what to do about erectile dysfunction, while women became uglier because they were uninformed about cosmetics.  People suffered from ADD (Ad Deprivation Dementia) as a result of being required to spend longer time spans in actual thought.  Children, lacking a constant supply of new toys, began to run in the streets playing invented games such as stickball.  Christmas in 2008 and 2009 came very close to becoming a religious holiday.  It was an unmitigated disaster.

The baneful effects of this almost complete withdrawal of Advertising were especially pronounced in democratic countries, where people were allowed to have choices but no longer had the guidance of Madison Avenue to help them decide.  Deprived of sound bites and other political Ads, politicians had to run for office on ideas and issues, and a few competent and thoughtful candidates actually got elected.  Almost immediately, the incumbents recognized the folly of limiting or prohibiting Advertising.  The pendulum swung in the opposite direction as governments clamored to restore the Natural Order.  In the United States, a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing unrestrained Freedom of Advertising not only passed in record time but was appended to the Bill of Rights.  To observe passage of the Amendment, the Supreme Court published a 40-page glossy Advertising supplement in the nation's newspapers.  Symbolically, the Amendment took effect on July 4, 2010, now known as Advertising Independence Day.  Other countries followed suit, bringing to fruition the Great Advertising Awakening.

Thus, it has come to pass that Advertising is not just an accepted reality of our lives; it is the reality of our lives.  With the recognition that Advertising is information, the foolish practice of differentiating commercials from news or information has been eliminated.  Fully 99% of Internet content is now Strategic Home Internet Targeting.  About the same proportion of mail represents the Customer Recruitment and Assimilation Program, and discarding or recycling these important documents is illegal.  Mail-order catalogs have become the primary textbooks in virtually all schools, as educators recognize that these are the only reading materials that citizens need to master to become informed (order forms are used for teaching math and writing).

The renaissance of Advertising is nowhere more apparent than in television, where people may now view uninterrupted, high-definition, three-dimensional Ads around the clock.  A few reactionary cable stations still produce "entertainment" programs, but they are required by law to underlay all such material with Advertising, using dual-layer digital technology.  Thus, those who accidentally view these progams – and those who are benighted enough to do so voluntarily – are assured of receiving, subliminally, a full hour of Advertising content during the hour that might otherwise be wasted on so-called entertainment.  Government agents have ferreted out the revolutionary cells of individuals who attempt to use ancient electronic devices to screen out Ads.  Offenders have been imprisoned and their machines destroyed.

Global economy has rebounded.  Never before in the history of mankind have so many people bought so many useless products without a second thought.  Virtually every man and woman has a veritable warehouse of products to make him or her more attractive, healthier, and sexier.  Even hopeless cases believe – thanks, of course, to Advertising – that, if one product doesn't work, another surely will.  Employment is at an all-time high, with many people working at two or three jobs to earn enough money to support their consumption of goods.  Indeed, Global Advertising Goods (GAG), founded by the heroic Madison Avenue freedom fighters, is the world's largest employer, with millions of people producing Strategic Home Internet Targeting or participating in the Customer Recruitment and Assimilation Program.

Children have more toys than ever and are becoming increasingly adept at breaking them and demanding new ones – essential training for adulthood.  Nowhere is this more apparent than at Christmas, which has lost its religious stigma and is now a year-round celebration of consumerism, as it should be.  The only exception is one day every leap year, when, on Feb. 29, in commemoration of the Great Crash, the world falls silent and mourns the temporary loss of Advertising.

*Strategic Home Internet Targeting was then known as "SPAM."  Scholars have debated the origin of the term, with some speculating that it symbolically represented a superior product that is unfortunately no longer on the market.  A more likely theory is that it stood for Strategically Placed Advisory Material because of its emphasis on health tips and financial advice.