"Advertising" or "advertisement" comes from Latin “advertere”, which means an approach to arouse public attention to something and induce a certain direction. Traditional definitions of advertising include a series of elements that distinguish the field from others. Each innovation in communication has been used for advertising, and in some way, each has changed advertising, which in turn has changed the set of elements used in its definition. However, there are or should be some essential elements that determine whether an activity is advertising, that is to say, the essential meaning is largely identical but with minor differences. In short, advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media. And we can learn the functions of advertising from the definition above which are listed as follows:1)information function; 2)demand creation function; 3)persuasive function; 4)get attention function; 5)goodwill establishment function.

”广告“一词来源于拉丁文”advertere“，指的是引起公众对某一件东西的关注以及引导其往某一特定方向的方法。广告的传统定义包括一系列却别与其他行业的元素。交流中的每一种创新都被用到广告中，每一种创新都以某种方式改变了广告，这反过来已经改变了它的定义中使用的背景元素。然而，有或者应该有一些决定一项活动是否是广告的基本元素，也就是说，基本意思大体是一样的，但是又细微的区别。简而言之，广告通常是支付的非个人信息的沟通，通常是由赞助商通过各类媒体识别的，在产品自然属性、服务或者想法方面颇具说服力。我们可以从以上定义了解广告的功能，如：1）信息功能；2)需求创造功能；3）说服功能；4）引起关注的功能；5）商誉设置功能。