Ad Archives

Print Resource      Web site free to all      Penn State Access Account required

Ad*Access John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History, Duke University
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. The advertisements are divided into five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II. Ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features.

adflip.com
Adflip is a privately financed archive of more than 6,000 print advertisements published from 1940 to the present. Products advertised, including everything from dog food to DeSotos, are divided into 17 search categories, from automotive to travel, and eight themed categories such as comic books and obsolete products. The site may be searched by year, product type, and brand name. This collection includes advertisements from 65 magazines and comic books, from Archie to Wired.

American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I (for researchers with a Penn State Access Account)
The images offered on this full-color site, created in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, include approximately 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900, and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.

By the People, For the People : Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943, American Memory, The Library of Congress
This colorful online exhibit showcases more than 900 original Works Project Administration posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program to support the arts. The silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs, art exhibits, theatrical and musical performances, travel and tourism, educational programs, and community activities in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Each poster is accompanied by very brief (15-20 word) descriptions and notes on the artist, date, and place produced.

Commercial Closet Association
"Commercial Closet Association works as a friend of business to educate and influence advertising. We help advertisers to understand, respect and include LGBT references in advertising to create a more accepting society and drive better business results." This site provides video clips, still photo storyboards, descriptive critiques, and indexing to more than 600 television and print media ad representations of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. Users can access ads by year, brand, company, business category, themes, region, agency, target group (gays or mainstream), and portrayals ("what the imagery/narrative conveys about gayness") categorized as vague, neutral, positive, or negative. Although the earliest ad is from 1958, the majority are drawn from the 1990s.

The Emergence of Advertising in America
More than 9,000 images relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. Part of the Library of Congress' American Memory Project

A History Teacher's Bag of Tricks
This memorial to Roland Marchand, a well-known historian of advertising and popular culture, includes a slide library with more than 3,000 advertisements drawn from Marchand's collection. Each image includes a citation and many also offer Marchand's notes. The images are organized into 31 subcategories.

Phillip Morris Advertising Archive, Philip Morris USA Incorporated
This site, created as a stipulation of the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry, includes more than 55,000 color images of tobacco advertisements dating back to 1909. Also provides access to more than 26 million pages of documents concerning research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising, and sales of cigarettes of the four tobacco companies involved (Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Brown and Williamson) and to two industry organizations (the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research). Ads and documents are searchable and accessible by date, brand name, title words, and individuals mentioned.

Virginia Runaways Project, University of Virginia, Virginia Center for Digital History
Provides full transcriptions and images of more than 2,200 newspaper advertisements regarding runaway slaves, mostly from the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette, between 1736 and 1776. Includes ads placed by owners and overseers for runaways as well as ads for captured runaway or suspected runaway slaves placed by sheriffs and other government officials. In addition, the site's creators have included ads for runaway servants and sailors as well as military deserters, to offer "a unique look at the lower orders in eighteenth-century Virginia". Searchable by any words appearing in ads.

University of Illinois Advertising Exhibit
This site contains two major sections: One highlights the three collections and the second groups advertisements from each of the collections according to theme. Access the two sections by clicking the links on the left of the page.

The Advertising Archives
"The Advertising Archives was established in 1990 by Larry and Suzanne Viner and is the largest and most comprehensive resource of its kind in Europe. Our collection comprises over 1 million catalogued images – 50,000 of which are searchable online." This site includes British and American press advertisements from 1850 to the present, British TV stills, and magazine cover artwork, and lots more.

Finding and Using Digital Images - Advertising
University of Washington Libraries Web page with links to various sites that explore the history of advertising.

Coloribus
"Coloribus.com is the biggest advertising archive in the world. We have collected more than 168,800 best works from all over the world. Our collection is a unique selection of the cutting edge & award-winning creative works from around the globe in advertising which definitely deserve public attention." View the ads in "demo mode" for free. Subscribers see "credits, related materials and get an ability to search prints and tv-spots by tags".