The first accepted advertising agency was William Taylor in 1786. Another early agency, started by James 'Jem' White in 1800 on Fleet Street in London, eventually became White Bull Holmes, a recruitment advertising agency that went bankrupt in the late 1980s. In 1812, George Reynell, an official in the London Gazette, established one of the first advertising agencies in London. This agency remained a family business as "Reynell & Son" until 1993 and is now part of the TMP Worldwide agency under the TMP Reynell brand in the UK and Ireland. Another early agency, founded by Charles Barker, operated as "Barkers" until it transitioned to management in 2009. 

Volney B. Palmer opened the first American advertising agency in Philadelphia in 1850. This agency placed advertisements produced by clients in various newspapers. 

In 1856, Mathew Brady created the first modern advertisement when he placed an ad in the New York Herald for "photographs, ambrotypes, and daguerreotypes." The typography and fonts he used were distinct from the published text and other advertisements. At that time, all newspaper ads were set in agate type, and using larger, more distinctive fonts created a sensation. The same year, Robert E. Bonner published the first full-page advertisement in a newspaper. 

In 1864, William James Carlton began selling advertising space in religious magazines. In 1869, at the age of 20, Francis Ayer founded the first full-service advertising agency, NW Ayer & Son, in Philadelphia. It was the oldest advertising agency in America, dissolved in 2002. James Walter Thompson joined Carlton's firm in 1868 and quickly became their top salesman. He purchased the company in 1877 and renamed it the James Walter Thompson Company. Recognizing that the company could sell more space if it provided content development services to advertisers, Thompson hired writers and artists to create the first known Creative Department in an advertising agency. He is regarded as the "father of modern magazine advertising" in the U.S. Advertising Age noted in 1964, while commemorating the agency's first 100 years, that "its history and overseas expansion overlapped with the entire history of modern advertising."