The art of advertising

May 25, 2010 6:52 PM

AdViews is the newest of Duke University's digitized advertising archives (see previously). Unlike the earlier sites, devoted to print advertising, AdViews is all about American TV commercials--several thousand of them, to be exact, from the agency Benton & Bowles (later D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles). Viewing the commercials requires ITunes.

Duke is not alone in digitizing its advertising collections; see, for example, the 19th-Century American Trade Card at Harvard Business School's Baker Library. Georgetown, meanwhile, has a small exhibit of vintage British railway posters. On a somewhat smaller scale, Sensation Press features a page devoted to all sorts of random Victorian ads. For more colorful relics from the history of advertising, visit the online exhibits at the William F. Eisner Museum (note: exhibits may include music). And don't forget to read the signs (including the ghosts).

posted by thomas j wise (9 comments total)

I could watch these for hours on end. Seriously. Thanks for the link.
posted by briank at 6:59 PM on May 25, 2010

Viewing the commercials requires ITunes.

..."digitized advertising archives" fail
posted by circular at 7:15 PM on May 25, 2010 [8 favorites]

My thought exactly, briank.
posted by pmurray63 at 7:33 PM on May 25, 2010

I like Adland.tv from Mefi's own dabitch.
posted by birdherder at 8:10 PM on May 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

Here's some vintage ads collections I've recently come across:

46 Cool Vintage Ads
15 Vintage Chewing Gum Ads
1969 LL Bean Catalog
Bad Vintage Postcards
posted by netbros at 8:46 PM on May 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

The digitizing for this project was done by none other than Metafilter's very own, AVGeek. I think he dreams vintage commercials now.
posted by NoMich at 4:04 AM on May 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

These are great!

We've come a long way?
posted by eenagy at 5:00 AM on May 26, 2010

Wow. Requiring iTunes to view these seems like a really, really stupid idea, but what do you expect from Duke? I think I have just became an honest-to-god Apple hater.
posted by BeerFilter at 9:42 AM on May 26, 2010

I wonder what the purpose is behind using iTunes for this? Is it a DRM decision? Was that the best way they could think of to deliver the media? Do they just like iTunes a whole, whole lot?

I don't object, per se, I'm just wondering.
posted by hippybear at 11:03 AM on May 26, 2010