Adland : the never-ending project
portfolio adland web design

Adland : the never-ending project

Dabitch
Dabitch
Test Card F

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.

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

The user tag page in 2006, all of these tags were on the commercials, and you could navigate by content like "dog"

2007: New York Times looks at Super Bowls past - source: Adland (USA)

Svenska Dagbladet: Check out Adland's amazing archive (Sweden)

Marketingsherpa: PR Interview: How to Be Seen in Adland, the Land of Edgy Video Ads (USA)

2008: Agencyspy: Adblogger Gets Death Threats etc. Over Human Rights Ads 2008 (USA)

Dagens Industri - Dödshot från läsare vardag för reklambloggare (Sweden)

Metro: "Mamma måste ha tappat mig på huvudet" 2008 (Sweden)

MedieVärlden: Kinesiska dödshot mot svensk reklamblogg (Swedish)

#adland A new design trick in 2008 was to pull in the hashtag #adland and use it in our banner area, allowing anyone on Twitter to play with our tagline.

2009: Dagens Industri "The worlds largest Super Bowl commercial collection.. is Swedish" (Sweden)

Medie Världen: "Vem vill se 37 år gamla Super Bowl-filmer, Åsk Wäppling?" (Sweden)

Dagens Industri - Adland airs live from The Cannes Festival (Sweden)

So, the worlds largest super bowl archive - 38 years! - is now embeddable (USA & Adland)

In 2009 Adland began pulling in all registered Adgrunts tweets from Twitter to catch fresh ad gossip. This was discontinued in 2011.
2009 was also the year of Bambuser, allowing any adgrunt to air live from their cellphone to be seen Adland

2011: Dagens Media: "Ad blogger banned by Google, accused of spreading pornography" (Sweden)

Brand Republic ranks Adland the sixth most influential in the world (UK)

The Adage power150 blog rankings. (USA)

2012: Meet The 22 Most Influential Advertising Bloggers (USA)

Adweek - 'The legendary ad blogger on Instagram creatives, brands riding the Reddit wave..." (USA)

2013: Financial Times Superbowl 2013 "Adland declared..." (2013)

Brand Equity "Ads and their keepers" - 2013 (India)

AdAge: AD BIZ IS YUKKING IT UP WITH THE #AGENCYLIFE HASHTAG (USA)

BI: #AgencyLife Hashtag On Twitter Prompts Huge Outbreak Of Whining In AdLand (USA)

Maine Today interview: Åsk Dabitch Wäppling CEO of Adland (USA)

Creative Interviews - Åsk Dabitch Wäppling (UK)

2013 and 2014 was the years of the Pinterest-like forever scroll design of the website, which you can still see in action at the Internet Archive.

The forever Pinterest style scroll would fill up, or shrink down to, any screens size 

2015: Tom Megginson: "Who owns Adland?" (Canada)

2016: Adland calls out Ad Age on Twitter over 'sexism' in the industry (USA)

Mediabistro: 8 Blogs Every Media Professional Should Follow (USA)

Dagens Media: Reklamtrötta reklamproffs ledde till sajt på dark web (Sweden)

The Drum: Adland goes Dark (web) (UK & USA)

Independent.ie "Can media make it on the darkside?" (Ireland)

"If she's crying, she's buying" Brand Equity (India)

AMA Marketing Insights: A Marketer's guide to the dark web 2016 (USA)

Quoted in Economic Times "Adworld’s most unusual CEO"  (India)

Curiosity July 2016: 8 RESOURCES FOR THE ADVERTISING-OBSESSED (USA)

2017: Resumé : Åsk Wäppling - The advertising worlds outsider / Reklamvärldens outsider (Sweden)

2019: Resume about Adland: "Ad writer accuses Nike of plagiarism" (Sweden)


The DMCA from Bridgestone event:

Reclaim: "World’s largest and oldest commercial archive Adland taken offline" (USA)

LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION™ notes Adland's death (USA)

Resumé : Reklamsajten Adland hotas av nedläggning (Sweden)

Bluebus; 'Adland' goes down for publicizing Bridgestone commercial - lawyer complained (Brazil)

SF Egotist: "Adland shut down over DMCA takedown" (USA)

Techdirt "Adland shuts down after web host complies with bullshit DMCA notice" (USA)