The advertisement image is a efficient and convincing means of visual communication. Through mass media and consumption mechanisms, modern societies establish this image as part of a daily iconography that, in turn, has influenced twentieth-century artistic languajes. This work centers on the importance of the advertisement image in Mexican press, through its historical and social development, emphasizing its plastic values and impor­tance as historical document, in the context of Mexican visual arts. As a document, the  advertisement image offers valuable information, for it appears in a period full of historical events and social transformations: from the Porfirian splendor, through the revolution that began in 1910 and  the post-revolutionary years, to the late thirties. As a study subject, the advertisement image has established its own periodicity, as well as the formal and aesthetic qualities that characterize it in the chronological universe analyzed here.