Marketing & Advertising

Advertising Historical Images

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• All the sites below provide image examples of historical advertising.  Some provide free images, some require registration, others charge a fee for use of images.  Be sure to properly acknowledge the source of any image you use from these web sites.

• Ad*Access

• 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. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University.

• 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.

• AdForum

• Ads of the World

• Ads of the World (AotW) is an advertising archive and community

• Associated Press Images Collection

• Contemporary and historical images from the Associated Press.

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• The Advertising Archives

• The Advertising Archives was established in 1990 by Larry and Suzanne Viner.
  The collection spans the years from the mid 19th Century to the present day. Image types include:-
  British & American Press Adverts
  British & American Magazine Covers and Artwork including story Illustrations
  Rare French & Spanish Magazine Art
  British TV Advertising Stills
  Mail Order Catalogues
  Posters, Postcards, Menus, Theatre Programmes & other Ephemera
  Wide selection of Vintage Magazines

• Coloribus.com

• Coloribus is a Creative Advertising & Commercials Archive with more than 2000000 ads.

• Digital Public Library of America

• Discover 44,918,855 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States

• Emergence of Advertising in America

• Freedom on the Move Project

• Freedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery.
  With the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers posted “runaway ads” to try to locate fugitives. Additionally, jailers posted ads describing people they had apprehended in search of the enslavers who claimed the fugitives as property.

• New York Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (1985 - 2009)

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• New York Times Archive offers page images of all pages from 1851 through 2009, including ads, and all are searchable; you can limit by "document type" to "display ad."

• PressDisplay

• Access to 2200+ newspapers from 97 countries in 56 languages. A marvelous tool for seeing original print advertising, in context, and a tool for getting in touch with recent hot topics.

• The Vanderbilt Television News Archive

• The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a complete archive of national television news broadcasts since August 5, 1968. Individuals request loans of items from the collection for reference, study, classroom instruction, and research. They offer DVDs that are duplications of entire broadcasts as well as compilations of individual news stories specified by the borrower. Borrowers pay fees for the items loaned to cover the costs of providing the service.

• Vintage Ad Browser

• Browser by type and then browse from image to image.

• WPA Posters: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.