A few months ago, Adland showed us that no matter how long you’ve been around, you can be taken down with a bogus DMCA notice. Now, Adland also shows us that you can come back.
The biggest commercial archive in the world was shut down after its host Vultr responded to a questionable Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim by telling Adland to remove its domain from the network within 24 hours.
On January 14th, Adland CEO “Dabitch” published a post on their website titled “Adland resurrected – heck we do it to dead movie stars and ad slogans, so why not Adland itself.”
She explained why she refused to simply publish her life’s work to YouTube or even the Internet Archive as many have suggested. “Because it was important to them that this was preserved, just not important enough that I should be in some way compensated for this work.”
She also addressed the support she’s received informing her of all the ways Adland had been important to people. “It’s of extreme interest to producers, strategists and creatives to see what has been done in categories and with brands in the past, but it’s not only ad professionals or the actors in the ads who seek out the archives. It’s people who can’t get that jingle out of their head, and students who are looking at our shared modern history as reflected in the ads. Advertising is a part of culture. It doesn’t just effect people in our own industry.”
“Advertising is a history worth preserving. I want to be the gal who hops in a truck to collect the archives from Northlitchs, and TMs—two agencies who recently closed after seventy and eighty-five years of operation. I want to preserve the Instagram stories that are blips on peoples screens, already forgotten, yet make up the majority of media spend now.”
She also expressed interest in partnerships. “There are a handful of others like myself who want to keep these fleeting moments, recognizing that they are part of our advertising’s shared history, if not history in general. As we rush headlong into 2020, we’ll be exploring opportunities for partnerships and opportunities to make Adland grow.”
The takeaway is that Adland is not going anywhere and she will continue to “soldier on” to keep it alive and bring it back to its former glory.
