Is Advertising 'Art'?

This is a question I am interested in exploring.
When I was a kid, all I knew was that I wanted to do 'art'. I didn't know, or particularly care, what 'art' I would do. But I was convinced I would be an 'artist'.
I can't recall when I decided that I wanted to be in Advertising, but in my head it can't have seemed like much of a jump from 'art' to advertising.
I will continue to post as I explore this idea.

My recent trip to Manchester Art Gallery provided me with a bit of information about the argument.
The gallery has a fairly extensive Modern Art collection called 'Modern Art- You can not be serious?'.

The information displayed about Modern Art was the following,
"When Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal in 1917 and called it a fountain, he changed the course of art.
The general public thought his art was a joke but Duchamp had a serious message; art can be in any media and take any form.
LS Lowry once said, 'Why can't a work of art be humorous and still be taken seriously?'
Art can be many things; sometimes serious, sometimes playful yet often it is a combination of the two.
In their search for new ways of interpreting life, artists have employed a variety of approaches.
They have pared forms to their very essence, used illusion and ambiguity to question what we see and plundered popular culture for ideas and images.
Increasingly, it is left for the viewer to interpret art."

So what relates art and advertising? The methods explained by that text are similar to that of advertising; taking ideas for popular culture and questioning what we are seeing, allowing the viewer to interpret and so thereby creating communication and relationship through the art to the desired audience. Is this not what we do in advertising? Is it not our role to 'interpret life' as it is true to say that advertising is one of the truest reflections of society at that time?