Advertising & Public Relations

This site, published by the Duke University Libraries, contains more than 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements from print sources. Ads are for a variety of products such as soaps, televisions, radios, and airlines and were published from 1911 to 1957.

A prequel to Duke University Libraries' Ad*Access which covers 1850 to 1920.

Browse magazines to find advertisements. Click on Books in the ribbon above the Way Back Machine search box and select All Texts and scroll down and select The Magazine Rack collection. Keyword searches search Ad*Access but excludes The Magazine Rack collection.

This link to the advanced Google Books allows you to limit your search to Magazines which can be viewed online.

Similar to Duke University's Ad*Access but for British advertisements beginning in the middle of the 19th century.

Good for current ads from around the world. This site published in conjunction with Clios (the advertising award people), allows you to search for and browse for recent/current advertising.

There are many images of print ads on the internet. One feature of the Advanced search is that you can limit your results by Copyright usage rights. Use common sense with this limit, it may not work perfectly.

This website has a variety of media including television and radio commercials. Search using the search box below the Way Back Machine search box. Will also include results from Ad*Access.

Contains numerous television advertisements. A search for your product name may be sufficient (e.g. GEICO). Adding other keywords may help (e.g. GEICO pig ad, or GEICO 2012).