Adland : the never-ending project

Challenge

I bored all my friends talking about advertising all the time. I am obsessed with ads. I wanted to share ad knowledge with other ad geeks.

Solution

I built a website - from the servers and up - to collect ads, share ad news, and to talk about ads with like-minded people. It serves both as a water cooler gossip site, advice for students and news source. It began in 1996 and is still going. I've created the trademarked name, red TV logo and several test-card F inspired website themes, as well as a Test Card F 404 page.

Result

I'm still obsessed with ads, so it didn't help at all.

Some of the adland® front end design and special technical features over the years

Press, technical development and features in Adland over the years

Many outlets either used Adland for source materialor reported on things happening on the site and to Adland. I'm not sure for how long we've been linked at the Library of Congress researchers moving images center, but it has been years. Probably two decades.

1998: "She puts the plagiarized ads on the web" (Sweden)

2000: Marketingmag Canada (Canada)

Researchbuzz alert (USA)

Adformatie "Seven hours of viewing pleasure" (The Netherlands)

2001: The Globe and Mail "All ads, all the time - only on-line" (Canada)

Creativity Magazine : Alt Career / Dabitch is back 2001 (USA)

2002: Wired: When the Spam Hits the Blogs 2002 (USA)

Markedsføring:"Sikke mange spøgelser" (Denmark)

Banner Project: "Click on those who click on Adland"

I created banners from visitor stats that rotated and revealed how global Adland was, as visitors came from ad agencies, ad schools and film schools all over the world.

2003: Propaganda : 15 NOK for 10,000 commercials (Norway)

"Lekplats för reklamare - Playground for ad people" IDG Internetworld (Sweden)

Shootonline on Adland back in April 2003 (USA)

Variety - Got ads? Adland is center for news - September 2003 (USA)

The Adland® Paywall - charging for ad access and getting banned by Paypal.

2004: The advertising show March 2004 (USA)

Adland, winner of MarketingSherpas Readers' Choice Award 2004 (USA)

Philadelphia Inquirer 2004 "Entertainment, but where's the pitch?" (USA)

VEER: Ad Comments And Stir (USA)

NewsDirect - Advertising community hits the 35.000 members mark

"The world's largest advertising community rounds out 35,000 users"

2005: Fast Company - Best Business Blogs: Advertising (USA)

Etermedia - Sites you can not live without! (Sweden)

Billboard: Blogging By Moonlight (USA)

Børsen - the Danish Financial Times writes about Adland and Marachino (Denmark)

Politiken Nyheder Denmark July 2005 (Denmark)

IDG Computerworld / Internetworld @IDGse 2005 (Sweden)

2006: The Ranch - Interview with Dabitch (USA)

Adfreak: "Adland turns ten, braces for spankings" (USA)

Attention Magazine: The New Media Elite (Sweden)

Adland's Battle of the ad blogs 2006 (Adand / Global)

Internetworld: form och funktion 06 - Best design and functions 2006 (Sweden)
We had all of our commercials tagged by the users, and this was listed as 2006 best web design function