That's a really great site!
If only they'd offer a zoom for the ads to that one also would be able to read the "fine print" in the ads.

Thomas, some of the ads offer a zoom function (not all of them though, you're right). If zoom is available you can click on the pic and also see a little zoom icon (magnifying glass) below it. For example, http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/airlines-and-aircraft-ads#adw09g6m7m182udt

I think this is my favourite of your sites Philipp, I'm really interested in ads and its so cool to have such a large selection to look at.

Quite cool, though it must have been a ridiculous job to categorise/put together. Wonder how many people actually click through to the next pages? (I, for one, was only interested in the general change over time). Might play around with some of these ads this weekend and create some for of video with it (and test out a open source video editor at the same time).

Aside of this, when I first saw the name "Vintage ad Browser", I thought "Vintage" was a brand and "ad browser" would be a browser which would A ad ads for which you would be paid or B hijack sites ads. Either way, it must have been ages ago that I saw someone use the word vintage anywhere :/ xD

> Quite cool, though it must have been a ridiculous job
> to categorise/put together.

I started working on this in... around middle of last year, I think? 100,000 was the magic number I was trying to reach for some reason (after I had reached 10,000 and then 25,000, which were my first goals) :)

> Wonder how many people actually click through to the next pages?

Good question. As far as early statistics go...
- "Alcohol" is currently the most popular category. It's followed by "Airlines" which we may want to disregard because that's the first link, alphabetically. Then the next most popular main category is computer & software ads.
- The main search query on the site is "apple", which I suppose mostly means "apple computer". Followed by the query "microsoft".
- subsequent pages (the numbers below the decades) are indeed clicked through a little bit less it seems, but they are also clicked through for popular categories (like computers of the 1980s :)).

> Aside of this, when I first saw the name "Vintage ad
> Browser", I thought "Vintage" was a brand and "ad
> browser" would be a browser which would A ad ads for which
> you would be paid or B hijack sites ads.

I'm not a native speaker, I hope the word "vintage" hasn't become really obscure or something?

Someone dugg this: http://digg.com/arts_culture/Vintage_Ad_Browser

Great idea and col website!
Is it possible to re use some of the images in a blog post or slides for a speech?

Great... this is what I hate most of anything... writing a comment and than finding out it has never been posted... ok... summary:
1. Ignore my comment on how many people clicked through, I was thinking about the hundreds of ads hidden behind the next pages (when it didn't fit on one page).
2. "Vintage", Not sure how obscure it is, although I know the word, I have not seen it used for ages (if ever) as far as I remember. (Oh and, I ain't native either, however I follow English education, so my English tends to be quite all right :/)
3. Did you deliberately use this (inefficient, old-fashioned) design (as a tribute to the look of the ads)?? Or did you simply don't care xD???

Philipp, you gave an example above that linked to a specific ad (in the airlines category). Is it possible to link to ads in general?

For example, if I search for apple, I can see that there is a zoom image for the first result http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/l-fyx4uav8to286e.jpg but there is no _#_ "permalink" shown on search result pages, only on category pages.

Bug report: If I mispell something, then the suggestion includes HTML tags

I really like this site, very interesting and unusual, put it into bookmarks. It must have been very time consuming to create such a large collection...

Suggestions for minor improvements:
1) search box bigger and on top, under it the tag cloud
2) a bit bigger logo and more subtle line under it
3) "by color" should show only basic colors
4) show some interesting / most viewed / random ad thumbnails under tag cloud

BTW, can I ask you why did you move to China, Philipp?

super collection Philipp!

> Philipp, you gave an example above that linked to a
> specific ad (in the airlines category). Is it possible to link
> to ads in general?

I think I'll likely include permalinks from search results in the future, good point.

> Bug report: If I mispell something, then the suggestion
> includes HTML tags

Thanks, fixed!

> Did you deliberately use this (inefficient, old-fashioned) design
> (as a tribute to the look of the ads)?? Or did you simply don't
> care xD???

I do care :) What specifically did you stumble over/ didn't like?
The main design goal was for the site to "get out of the way"... the less you notice it, the better, except maybe for a logo... just a tool, with the focus on the vintage ads. That was the goal, anyway :)

There's no problem with the word vintage... I think it fits here better than any synonym of the word...

Interesting, after these two/ three days I still can't see the site in the top 10 when searching for [vintage ad browser]. It was briefly in on the first day but since disappeared (a search for [site:vintageadbrowser.com] does reveal it is partially indexed, though). Google is getting fast but these effects still seem to point at a weakness with their relevancy algos (considering "vintage ad browser" is probably a non-competitive, merely navigational search query).

> but there is no _#_ "permalink" shown on search
> result pages, only on category pages.

Update: Permalinks are now showing in search results.

Hi there – nice site!

Any plans to do a version with UK ads??

Claire, I've tried to include ads from any country (there's also some ads from the UK, for instance), though admittedly many sources right now may be from the US. If you know good resources for UK sites, like books, CDs, websites, anything, please let me know...

Thanks for adding the permalinks, though they don't always work.

For example

http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/search?q=Barremolen

gives 3 results, but the permalink on the first one does not work.

In addition, there are images which are zoomable, but dont have permalinks, such as

http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/search?q=french+gouda