Commercials are considered an integral part of everyday life of a modern man. Their main purpose is to attract a large base of consumers and secure a large profit. Advertisers resort to various methods to achieve this goal. This is achieved using inventive linguistic structures, strategies and techniques. This thesis is an overview of the afore-mentioned linguistic strategies and techniques and of the basic principles of advertising. One of the important characteristics of the language of advertising is its autonomy. Advertisements belong to a separate, multimedia discourse which combines different elements such as sound, image, colour and text. That being said, the language of advertising cannot be placed into any of the five functional styles of the standard language, but the characteristics of each of those are definitely present in the language of commercials. Even though the advertising language belongs to a separate, free style sphere in which everything is allowed, ad creators should be familiar with and respectful of the standard language norm. Conscious deviation from the language norm is visible and acceptable, but unconscious deviation is an indicator of poor knowledge of Croatian standard language. This thesis also looks into kinds and frequency of deviation from the norm in the advertising language in Split-Dalmatia County and in individual online advertisements