Billboard - History

History

Early billboards were basically large posters on the sides of buildings, with limited but still appreciable commercial value. As roads and highways multiplied, the billboard business thrived.

• 1794 – Lithography was invented, making real posters possible
• 1835 – Jared Bell was making 9 × 6 posters for the circus in the U.S.
• 1867 – Earliest known billboard rentals (source: OAAA)
• 1872 – International Bill Posters Association of North America was established (now known as the Outdoor Advertising Association of America) as a billboard lobbying group.
• 1889 – The world's first 24 sheet billboard was displayed at the Paris Exposition and later at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The format was quickly adopted for various types of advertising, especially for circuses, traveling shows, and movies
• 1908 – The Model T automobile is introduced in the U.S., increasing the number of people using highways and therefore the reach of roadside billboards.
• 1919 – Japanese candy company Glico introduces its building-spanning billboard, the Glico Man
• 1925 – Burma-Shave makes its billboards lining the highways
• 1931 – The Wall Drug billboards start to go up nationwide
• 1960 – The mechanized Kani Doraku billboard is built in Dotonbori, Osaka
• 1965 – The Highway Beautification Act is passed after much campaigning by Lady Bird Johnson
• 1971 – The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act bans cigarette ads in television and radio, moving that business into billboards
• 1981 – The Supreme Court overturns a San Diego billboard ban, but leaves room open for other cities to ban commercial billboards
• 1986 – Non-television advertising becomes restricted – as now, non-television adverts could not show people smoking. This meant that Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut, amongst other brands – advertised their cigarettes through increasingly indirect and obscure campaigns to a point where they became recognizable.
• 1997 – Tobacco advertising is no longer allowed on outdoor billboards in America
• 2007 – Industry adopts one sheet plastic poster replacement for paper poster billboards and begins phase-out of PVC flexible vinyl, replacing it with eco-plastics such as polyethylene
• 2010 – The first "scented billboard," emitting odors similar to charcoal and black pepper to suggest a steak grilling, was erected in Mooresville, North Carolina by the Bloom grocery chain to promote the sale of beef
• 2010 – Augmented Billboards were introduced in the Transmediale Festival 2010 in Berlin using Artvertiser