Is an Online Advertisement Literature?
This falls into the biggest question of all: Is writing online literature? It’s no wonder why this question can be asked, because the classical definition of what literature means is quite clear.
Literature is written works, or published books and writings. This has nothing to say about “typed” material or books only “published” online. Despite this ambiguity, the pros at American Ad Scripts, specialists in writing elegant ads that can be compared artistically to poetry and prose, would like to argue that, yes, an online advertisement is literature. In ways, an advertisement can have just as big as an impact on mankind as a best selling book or a five star movie script. Ads, however, impact us in our subconscious more so than blatant writing analyzed in our frontal lobes.
However, with this claim out of the way, let us not forget that there is a finer definition of literature that ads do not fall into. No one in 200 years from now is going to show a 21st-C advertisement to their literature class and say, “Now this is a true piece of art we can all learn from.” Literature in it’s elitist sense is a work of elegant writing that deserves to be passed down through generations. Since ads are considered derogatory, they do not receive the kind of praise that prose and poetry do. Though we may argue that ads are good for mankind and should not be derogatory, we still understand that ads are not as capable at telling stories as book are. A book can be riddled with hidden meaning that may never get deciphered completely whereas a short ad you skim across may only be able to make some fine points about life.
To conclude with a satisfactory answer, yes, online ads, or online writings in general, are literature, but not in the elitist sense, and for a good reason.