and text onto banners that were then plastered onto
both sides of ten-by-twenty-foot panels installed on
flatbed trucks, advertisers created billboards that
could be moved from one location to another for
maximum public exposure. By 1995, mobile bill-
boards were a regular fixture on the streets of major
cities. That year, Delroy Cowan took advantage of
the trend by inventing mobile advertising trucks that
had triangle-shaped panels (“trivision”) that could
be rotated every six or seven seconds and intro-
duced two of his special trucks in Miami.
Magazine and Newspaper Advertising Like bill-
boards, printed texts such as magazines and newspa-
pers have a long history as advertising media.
Printed flyers distributed on the streets in seven-
teenth century England often carried advertise-
ments, and the first paid ads appeared in the French
newspaperLa Pressein 1836 in order to allow the
publisher to lower its price and increase its circula-
tion. The 1990’s, introducing the Internet as a me-
dium for printed texts, witnessed the birth of a new
flexibility for advertising and gave additional mo-
mentum to the “dot-com” boom. Some corpora-
tions, such as Worldshare, provided Internet access
to users willing to donate time to view promotional
advertisements. The Web sites FreeRide and Green-
field Online offered coupons for free products and
even cash to anyone willing to read sponsors’ ads.
During the 1990’s, many of these companies were
able to exist solely by generating advertising rev-
enue.
Radio and Television Advertising Radio and televi-
sion advertising existed since the first radio and tele-
vision stations used commercial messages to encour-
age the consumer purchase of radios and television
sets. Both pieces of technology were initially costly,
and, not coincidentally, both introduced their form
of advertising through commercial sponsorship of
popular dramas and news programs. By the 1990’s,
the advent of cable television and satellite radio al-
lowed increasingly specific markets of viewers to
whom the advertisers could direct increasingly spe-
cific marketing. Ironically, cable and satellite provid-
ers in the 1990’s also gained popularity by promot-
ing “ad-free” television and radio programs, a
development that reflected a rise in consumer dis-
gust for intrusive advertising and necessitated the
development of more covert forms of advertising
such as product placement in films and television se-
ries and product endorsements spoken in the con-
text of talk radio hosts’ monologues.
Talk radio had long allowed the announcement
of sponsors’ names and products on air, but the
1990’s particularly emphasized the use of personal
endorsements by talk-show jockeys such as Howard
Stern and Rush Limbaugh. These endorsements
were intended to sell products without explicitly ac-
knowledging that the celebrity was making an adver-
tisement. Scenery and costuming in films included
literal product placement to silently and visually
advertise the use of prominent products. The televi-
sion seriesSex and the Cityexplicitly advertised prod-
ucts through the female characters’ worship of such
brand-specific shoes as Christian Dior, Manolo Blah-
nik, and Jimmy Choos.
One developing trend started during the 1990’s
was the use of computer-generated images to adver-
tise products. Computer graphics could be placed
strategically on blank billboards and television
screens included for that purpose in the back-
ground scenery of a film or television show. Theo-
retically, these product placements could be changed
depending on the needs of the advertising sponsor.Loosening Restrictions Another trend born in the
1990’s was the loosening strictures on advertising for
a number of previously controlled products on tele-
vision and in print media, such as alcohol and cer-
tain prescription drugs. Hard liquor and prescrip-
tion medication had been previously controlled in
how they were allowed to be portrayed; alcohol man-
ufacturers voluntarily restricted advertising to me-
dia where 70 percent of viewers were over twenty-
one years old and content was directed specifically
at adults, while prescription drug manufacturers
kept their advertisements vague in content.
Relaxed social mores caused for looser self-
regulation. In the late 1990’s, Captain Morgan was
suggested as the chosen beverage of the “cool” den-
tist, and Senator Bob Dole hawked erectile dysfunc-
tion drug Viagra for Pfizer. These changes—along
with, ironically, tighter regulations on the use of
tobacco advertising—reflected changes in social
mores. Drinking, in a tasteful context, was allowed
for even the harder liquors such as Seagrams whisky,
and the frank discussion of prescription medica-
tions on television became the norm. On the other
hand, Camel was punished for using a cartoon char-
acter to sell cigarettes. Socially, smoking was consid-The Nineties in America Advertising 5