When was billboards invented

Roadside restaurants made use of billboards to advertise hot meals for competitive prices. The effectiveness of these advertisements led to creating an entirely new branch of the advertising industry as clients demanded newer and more attractive ads that would catch the eye and entice the traveler to stop and spend money. In the early s there was a boom in national billboard campaigns. Big advertisers began mass production of billboards for the national market.

From toothpaste and soaps, to breakfast cereals and sodas, billboards were made to advertise in big, bold pictures and images. During the war there was a concerted effort from the industry to help in the mobilization while in peacetime the concern was focused on efforts to generally improve the way of life.

That was not without debate, either. Many people worried about what they saw as the wastefulness of Gilded Age billboards. The paper claimed that 50 to men pasted flyers throughout the city, amounting to roughly 10 million sheets per week during the busy season.

The paper may have been overestimating …. By , many states had established their own billposter organizations, and in a more standardized physical structure for billboards emerged. This, interestingly, laid to rest some of those environmental issues the New York Star had complained about more than a decade before.

Standardized billboard sizes allowed companies to run the same ads in lots of different places. During this period, big names such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg made billboards a regular part of their national marketing plan. Within just 12 years, most cities had a national outdoor advertising presence. In , the U. That same year, the department also targeted the Outdoor Advertising Association of America for alleged price fixing. Three years later, the first round of federal legislation incentivizing state control of billboards along interstate highways passed.

It was the start of what would become a decades-long tug-of-war between anti-billboard groups and the industry. It still rears up occasionally, and four states have outright banned billboards. We say: Their loss. In , the industry got a big boost when advertising of tobacco products was banned on broadcast media. Guess who got a windfall of advertising? OAI was established to promote outdoor advertising. It later merged with OAAA. As travel and transport progressed in the Modernist era, becoming more affordable and common, so did road infrastructure.

The creation of the Interstate Highway System resulted in increased success for billboard advertising, shifting the focus of the industry towards roadsides.

The Interstate Highway System — a system that connects the different US states together — was viewed as a goldmine of display opportunities. Until the s, there was a lack of restrictions regarding the size, spacing, placement, and design of billboards. This changed in with the Highway Beautification Act : it controlled billboards by limiting them to commercial and industrial areas and by requiring states to set size, lighting, and spacing standards.

While some in the industry thought that this would put an end to billboards. Instead, billboard designs complied with the newly formed regulations.

American advertising techniques such as billboard advertising became more common in Europe during the Modernist period and post-war age due to increased mobilisation. The usage of large posters and traditional billboard advertising gradually became more frequent in the UK as the Twentieth Century progressed. In the s, British Posters Limited was founded, looking after the interests of media-owner employees. Though they ceased trading in , this led to several employees setting up as specialist buyers, a role that has shaped the industry and still exists today.

The lithographic process was perfected in which gave rise to the illustrated poster. Gradually, measures were taken to ensure exposure to posters was sustained for fixed periods of time. This led to bill posters erecting their own structures in order to offer more desirable locations where vehicular and pedestrian traffic was heaviest.

In the beginning, American roadside advertising was generally local. Merchants painted signs or glued posters on walls and fences to notify the passersby that their establishments up the road sold horse blankets, rheumatism pills, and other useful items. The large format American poster measuring more than 50 square feet originated in New York when Jared Bell began printing circus posters The stated purpose of the association was to promote a greater understanding of the poster medium, provide an expanded nationwide organization for coordinating the services offered by member companies, and to address the ethical concerns of early industry leaders.

Michigan formed the first state bill posters association in , followed by Indiana, New York, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which had active state associations by In , a standardized billboard structure was established in America, and ushered in a boom in national billboard campaigns. Confident that the same ad would fit billboards from coast to coast, big advertisers like Palmolive, Kellogg, and Coca-Cola began mass-producing billboards as part of a national marketing effort.

By , standardized services were available to national advertisers in nearly every major urban center. In , the industry association established an education committee which served to encourage members to donate public service advertising.