Finding Advertisements
- Ad*Access Collection of over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
- AdAgeCentury Has rankings of top slogans, jingles, etc. from the last century.
- National Policy Group's Policy Central Click on "ad spotlight" for current political television adverts.
- The Emergence of Advertising in America 1850-1920 A database of over 9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.
Old/Historical Advertisements
- Proquest Historical Newspapers Change the 'database' to "news- historical" & search one at a time. Go to "advanced search." Change the first search box to 'document type' and type in "ad." Enter your search term in the second box. Type in "display ad" in 3rd box for no classifieds.
- American Periodicals Series Online 1740-1900 Digitized images of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Go to "advanced search" and change the first search box to 'document type' and type in "ad." Enter search term in box #2.
- Harper's Weekly Covers 1857-1912. Select "advertisement" on the 'select feature' menu.
- The Times (London) 1785-1985 Go to "advanced search" and limit the selection to "advertising."
Television Commericals
The Duke University Special Collections Library has made more than
1,500 historic TV commercials from the Hartman Center for Sales,
Advertising and Marketing History available on iTunes U in a collection
called "AdViews." The collection is freely available and viewable at
library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews.
The first 1,500
digitized television commercials, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, are
part of the Hartman Center's D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles
(DMB&B) advertising agency archive. It includes 12,000 commercials
total, some produced as recently as the late 1980s. Duke plans to make
the remaining commercials available by the end of 2009.
The
commercials pitch everything from shampoo and toys to dog food and
coffee. New York agency DMB&B produced the ads for iconic American
companies such as General Foods, Texaco, and Kraft.
"I was
looking at some of the commercials that are now being digitized at
Duke, and they almost provide a history of U.S. culture," said George
Grody, a former Procter and Gamble marketing executive, now a visiting
professor at Duke. "You can see how the roles of women have changed
over the years, the role of the family has changed; African-Americans
in advertising in the late '60s, where they weren't so present in the
early '60s."
An interactive quiz about the ads is available at dn.duke.edu/adviewsquiz.
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