The Journey to Decentralized Advertising: From Romans to Routers.

The history of advertising is as old as the history of language. Unfortunately, today we tend to have a very limited idea of what advertising is and this constrained vision leads us to believe that advertising is something that sprung up in the early 20th century and then solidified into its modern form in the 60s and 70s. The hit American TV show Mad Men certainly has done a lot to further this misconception.
But let’s look at advertising in a broader perspective.

Ancient Advertising

When the city of Herculaneum, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius was rediscovered one of the things that people were shocked to discover was advertising in the form of graffiti. Before, it was thought that this was simply some sort of rebellious art, but no — ancient Vesuvians were trying to sell something.

Press and Pamphlets

Advertising really blew up, however, with the invention of the printing press. Luther and others had to advertise their ideas far and wide and the printing press allowed them to do it. This was a crucial development and single leaf pamphlets became extremely common throughout the renaissance as binding remained too expensive and labor intensive.

Graven Images

Eventually engraved plates allowed for even more creative advertising. Hitherto businesses had often had logos but they were limited to the storefront, now they could have pamphlets printed with a logo that is unique and instantly recognizable as theirs. This is a crucial part of advertising development. Words all look relatively similar due to them being made of the same building blocks. Logos, however, are entirely unique and instantly recognizable.
As bookbinding got cheaper throughout the era of industrialization, the dominance of religion and government propaganda began to slip. Next up was the news and then the serialized ‘pulp’ fiction novels that came to dominate entertainment for years.
But to make money, printers realized that selling the papers for a one time price was foolish. They could sell to two people: the buyer that wants the content and someone else that wants the reader to see something unavoidable.
Voila the birth of print advertising as we know it.

Advent of Electrical Advertizing

This developed rather naturally into the magazine/newspaper dynamic that we see today. This, however, was eventually challenged by radio and then after radio, television. The development of television was a crucial stage because it allowed for a whole new level of detail to be conveyed in such a short period of time. Reading takes a lot of time and the radio is like talking to someone in the dark. It is hard to really convey an idea of something since no matter how much you talk about it they’ll never be able to see it.
TV changed all of this. The only thing it was missing was interactivity. It was still a passive system. You couldn’t interact with it or ask questions or learn more. Advertisers had to hope they got everything across correctly the first time.
Information Age
This is where the internet comes in. The internet had all of the benefits of television plus two major things. One is that it is interactive and the second is that there is no channel surfing problem. With the internet you can go exactly where you want and do exactly what you want exactly when you want.
This is an advertisers fantasy world. Especially with modern tools, advertisers can put products exactly where their target customer is going to be. There’s no more guess work. If you want to sell a Porsche car cover, you put it on a Porsche car forum.
So this has been working for advertisers for years. They’ve been pulling in obscene amounts of money. World wi-fi wants to help get you in on the action.

Decentralization and Wifi, globally

The way it works is simple. It allows you to setup your router in a way that lets other people use it to access the internet. However, they have to watch some advertising before they can use it.
Remember the last time you really needed wifi but all the networks around were locked? I bet you would’ve watched a few ads to get on one of those networks for free!
The upshot with World Wi-fi is that you, the router owner, are going to be making money. You’ll be getting in on the huge internet advertising market that has been targeting you for years.
This is what World Wi-fi is working towards. A more democratic and personable advertising system that also helps people out. People who need to connect can get online, advertisers get localized consumers to target, and you get paid.

With world wi-fi internet marketing is finally being decentralized. For advertisers, this means that the third party that stands between their brand and the community is eliminated. Given the unique position of the router as the medium of advertising, new — cost-effective — promotion capabilities are being put into the marketer’s digital toolbox. All these while, these advertisings aren’t irritating to the audience. If anything, they will be seen as useful — it’s a way to earn tokens, after all!
Today, we’re just at the beginning of something incredible — a revolution in technology and the way business is done. We really ought to look to the past in order to better understand the future, whether it be in advertising, the blockchain, or something we’ve never heard of yet.