Advertisements do much more than sell products and services; they often gauge the state of popular culture and opinion as well as reflect important moments and achievements in history.
Super Bowl Commercials
Websites
- Adland : Super Bowl Commercials
- Need to be a (paid) member to view the videos
- Includes Super Bowl commercials back to 1969 (Super Bowl III)
- Includes a list of recent advertising books
- AdvertisementAve.com
- Commercials from Super Bowl 35 to the present
- Provides only basic information (advertiser, product, website, duration)
- View commercials with either RealPlayer or Media Player
- Captions.com
- Lists the advertisers who added closed-captioning of their Super Bowl commercials
- Includes lists back to 2000
- Devlib.org
- Includes selected "pre-1990" Super Bowl commercials
- New York Times : The Super Bowl Ad : Two Decades of Players
- Includes charts that show the number of commercials for vehicles, food, beverages, etc., as well as the percentage of ads that featured humor, animals, or celebrities
- Includes a listing of all ads aired as well as selected videos back to 1984
- NFL Network
- Includes videos for commercials aired during the latest Super Bowl
- Reprisemedia.com
- Access their Search Marketing Scorecard™ for Super Bowl commercials back to 2006
- Sign up for free White Paper which includes:
- Statistics and detailed rankings for the full field of Super Bowl Advertisers
- Expert reviews of the year’s winners and losers
- Best practices for building an integrated cross-channel marketing campaign
- Spike.com : Super Bowl Ads
- Commercials back to 2002
- Includes links to browse by advertiser
- Superbowl-ads.com
- Includes commercials back to 1998
- USA TODAY : How all the ads ranked in USA TODAY's Super Bowl Ad Meter
- Ranks commercials by popularity (as determined by volunteers from Houston and McLean)
- Shows the quarter during which the ad appeared. 2007 Super Bowl only.
Billboard/Outdoor Advertisements
Print
- The Modern American Poster, Stewart Johnson (1983)
- Buyways : Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape, Catherine Gudis (2004)
- American Billboard : 100 Years, James Fraser (1991)
- Advertising Outdoors : Watch This Space!, David Bernstein (1997)
Websites
- R. C. Maxwell Company Collection (Duke University)
- Presents a uniquely comprehensive record of regional outdoor advertising over a period of nearly 80 years.
- Photographs are arranged chronologically by a numerical system devised by the company
- Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
- Over 500 pre-1929 R.C. Maxwell Company images
- ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions)
- Hundreds of image descriptions (but without images) of R.C. Maxwell photographs dating between the 1910s and 1952
- The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA)
- This industry trade organization has roots in an association founded in 1891 and has saved documentation of its work and that of several member companies
- Provides an in-depth look at the outdoor industry for over 100 years
- Outdoor Advertising Collections in the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing
- Duke University Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library
- No images, but lots of historical information about outdoor advertising
TV Ads
For television ads, check the CAT. Use the company name or "ad title" (e.g., Nextel Dance party) as your search term. You may also search sites listed on the Award Winning Advertisements page and Web sites pages for clips of television ads.
- Fifty Years of Coca Cola Advertisements, American Memory, The Library of Congress
- Features 50 Coca-Cola commercials, broadcast outtakes, and experimental footage that reflects the historical development of television advertising for a major commercial product
- Includes five examples of stop-motion advertisements from the mid-1950s, 18 experiments with color and lighting for television ads from 1964, and well-known commercials
- Offers the "Mean Joe Greene" commercial (1979); the first "Polar Bear" commercial (1993); the "Snowflake" commercial (1999); and "First Experience", an international commercial filmed in Morocco (1999)
- Open Video Project
- From Interaction Design Lab, School of Information and Library Sciences UNC at Chapel Hill
- In the search box use "commercial"
- Retrojunk : Commercials
- Classic television ads in a variety of categories from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
- visit4info "the place for ads"
- Mostly United Kingdom
- Includes print, television, and cinema advertising
Political Advertisements
Background
- Political Communication, Crane, Russak (1992)
- Special Issue : MultiMedia Politics includes videos 1998 (periodical)
- The Annenberg/Pew Archive of Presidential Campaign Discourse, Annenberg School for Communication, (2000)
- The Archive contains transcripts of speeches, television ads, and debates of twelve United States general election Presidential campaigns — 1952 through 1996. [no video or images] (CD-ROM)
Search the CAT for all formats
Videorecordings
Search the CAT. Combine 'Advertising' with a suggested term below to narrow your search in the LC Subject search make sure to do an advanced search and change the material type to video material:
Search the CAT. Combine 'Advertising' with a suggested term below to narrow your search in the LC Subject search make sure to do an advanced search and change the material type to video material:
Websites
- Political Campaigns
- Political Communication Lab, Stanford University
- The Living Room Candidate
- Presidential campaign television commercials, 1952 to the present.
- The :30 Second Candidate
- Companion Web site to the PBS television program, a one-hour documentary a==
- AllPolitics : Candidates (CNN)
- With roots going back to Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson's 1952 contest, politics and TV advertising are inextricably linked in the modern era
- Ad Spotlight
- Available to researchers with a Penn State Access Account
- Compiles political ads in RealAudio™ and RealVideo™ format back to 2004
- view issue ads, campaign ads for President, Governor, House and Senate Representatives, and "Miscellaneous" political ads
- Political Media Buying : A Brief Guide by Tobe Berkovitz
- Tobe Berkovitz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the College of Communication, Boston University
- For political commercials to be an effective means of persuasion they must be seen by the voter. The goal of media buying in an election campaign is to reach a defined target audience in the most efficient and economical way possible. The media buy should be an inherent part of the overall advertising strategy, and effective media planning should work within the framework of the broad communication goals established by the campaign.
Internet/Web Advertisements
Print
- www.advertising : Advertising and Marketing on the World Wide Web, Richard Adams (2003)
- Advertising and Marketing on the Internet : Rules of the Road, The Federal Trade Commission
- Covers rules and guidelines that are meant to protect businesses and consumers and to maintain the credibility of the Internet as an advertising medium.
- Advertising World
- Look under Ads for lists of sites with images, sites with videos, etc
- The Webby Awards
- Leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web's infancy
- Presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities
Radio Ads
Print
- Search the CAT. Combine 'Advertising' with a suggested term below to narrow your search in the LC Subject search make sure to do an advanced search.
- Underwriting 101 : Selling College Radio, Shyrl L. Plum (2000)
- Also available online via NetLibrary to researchers with a Penn State Access Account.
- Making More Money : Selling Radio Advertising Without Numbers, Godrey W. and Ashley Page Herweg (1995)
- 60 Second Sells : 99 Hot Radio Spots for Retail Businesses, Michael Redmond (1992)
- Selling Radio Direct, Michael C. Keith (1992)
- Effective Radio Advertising, Marc G. Weinberger, Leland Campbell, Beth Brody (1994)
- Radio Advertising : the Authoritative Handbook, Pete Schulberg (1996)
- Radio Advertising's Missing Ingredient : The Optimum Effective Scheduling System, Steve Marx, Pierre Bouvard (1991)
- Library of American Broadcasting Sound Bites, University of Maryland Libraries
- Part of the Radio Advertising Bureau Collection
- Offers a sample of 13 audio files of radio commercials from the late 1950s through the early 1960s
- Samples are available in .WAV and .AIFF and include ads for toothpaste, cold medicine, soft drinks, gasoline, beer, cigarettes, cookies, automobiles, dog food, deodorant, and pimple cream
Finding Advertisements
DatabaseWebsites
- AdWeek's Best Spots
- Video clips of advertisements along with all the credit information
- Creativity
- Includes links to the current issue and video clips.
- Note: All content on Creativity Online is free for 7 days after it is posted. Older content requires a paid subscription
- Advertising Examples, Slogans and Advertising Awards
- Contains links to past and present advertisements including ad slogans and advertising awards, as well as information, resources, and references
- Creative Advertisements Around the World
- A selection of different popular and innovative international ads.
- Advertising Museum Tokyo
- Promotes studies and understanding of advertising and marketing
- Has about 150,000 pieces of digitally archived advertisements
- Medicine and Madison Avenue
- Medicine and Madison Avenue Project presents images and database information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines
- Ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s
