What form of advertising was in medieval times?

Answer 1

1st Answer:

There wasn't any. No newspapers were made because the printing press hadn't been invented and about 90% of the population couldn't read. I guess you could call the stain glass windows in the churches "advertising" because they told the stories from The Bible. Most people made what they wore and grew what they ate. If they didn't they had someone do it for them. There were no malls, department stores, no sales, no signs. If there was a sign for something it was a symbol like a loaf of bread for a baker or cross spoons for a inn.

2nd Answer:

We do not have a lot of records of advertising, but that does not mean it did not exist.

We do know that some advertising was done in the middle ages, and that one way to do it was to post papers with written ads on them. When Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses, he was using a traditional method of announcing special lectures or challenges to debate. There is a link below to a section of an article on the 95 Theses that is explains this and has references.

More pictorial methods might also have been used. In ancient Rome, stencils were used for duplicating advertisement for games and other events. We have no records that I know of that these were used in the Middle Ages, but this fact may be deceptive. There are a lot of things about the Middle Ages that went unrecorded. One thing we do know is that stencil work suddenly appeared as soon as printing started to be done, and was used with woodcuts to color them in books. This being the case, it is safe to assume that the technology was not lost, and it would have been available for advertising. There is a link below on stencil printing.