Adsense in the 19th century

Trade cards were one of the most popular forms of advertising in America during the second half of the 19th century. They were posted and handed out, and people collected them. These cards were made obsolete by the arrival of color print magazines. Today, magazines are about to be made obsolete by the internet. Why can't a banner on a website look like one of these?

From the Baker Library Historical Collections:

"Brightly colored, with eye-catching illustrations on the front and promotional text on the back, these "trade cards" were produced by the hundreds of thousands and inserted into packages at the factory, handed out by retailers with every sale, or mailed to prospective customers.

From the early "tradesmen's cards" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the"business cards" of the early nineteenth century, advertising materials printed in one color on paper and pasteboard had been used to inform customers about goods and services.

Collecting trade cards became a craze in the 1880s. Cards were exchanged with friends and collected and pasted into albums. Highly decorative albums were compiled, making use of colorful scraps, trade cards, and other collectible cards."

Large picture galleries can be found here and here. Plus: a science fiction series, a japanese products series and a collection of anthropomorphic trade cards. Related article : Tall Tale Postcards.

Comments

[Aubrey Laughlin]

I am very happy that you featured trade cards on your site, because it perked my interest in the subject. Since I mostly purchase magazines from the 1800s, I have missed out on this "collector's approach" to advertising. By appealing to the "collecting" interest of many individuals, this type of advertising seems like it would have lasted longer, even in spite of the advent of color magazines. I believe there will always be a segment of the population that has an appreciation for the "stuff of paper." I don't think the Internet can ever truly replace that.