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The world's oldest ad medium has come a long way since hand-painted tobacco ads on barns
Before advertising was sold on the Internet, television, radio, even in print, it was sold outdoors. The medium has been around almost as long as there have been products or services to sell.
And before there was a Times Square, there was the poster business. The father of the modern poster was Jules Cheret, a French painter and lithographer who became famous for designing posters and outdoor signs for perfumes, concerts and wines.
In North America, the first large-scale user of outdoor signs was circus promoter RT. Barnum. Throughout the 180Os Barnum erected posters and signs that used flamboyant and exaggerated copy to advertise circus spectacles like mermaid shows. Barnum hoped the buzz from his ads would bring large crowds into his events, and it worked: he became one of the first millionaires in show business. Circus ads demonstrated out of home's ability to drive sales, prompting tobacco companies to begin using the medium. By the late 1800s, they were painting ads on the sides of the barns that lined North American railways.
Then, in 1901, Walter Foster and George Kleiser opened Foster & Kleiser Outdoor Advertising in Seattle and Portland, Ore. Their company-which would evolve into Clear Channel-spread across the United States and into Canada, where entrepreneurs had been building out-of-home operations of their own since the turn of the century. E.L. Ruddy had been formed in 1904, its ownership passing to Outdoor Advertising Sales, Claude Neon, TDI, Mediacom and ultimately CBS Outdoor Canada. Other companies including Vancouver's Bond & Ricketts (1908), Edmonton's Hook Signs (1908) and Midland Ont.'s Could Outdoor Advertising (1913) would ultimately become part of what is now Pattison Outdoor.
By the 1920s, out-of-home advertising had become more sophisticated, and the industry flourished as people migrated from rural areas to cities. With the rise of the automobile, advertisers saw value in putting up billboards and posters alongside well-travelled roads. The automobile would become ubiquitous by the middle of the 20th century, with Marketing reporting a 150% increase in auto mileage between 1947 and 1963. "When you have a message for motorists, take it out on the street where they can see it," urged...