US advertising spending quadrupled during the 1950s to reach new heights

Evidence

“The customer is not a moron, she’s your wife,” wrote David Ogilvy in 1955, expressing, in the vernacular of the times, a buoyant new mentality among American advertising executives. Having nearly collapsed over the 1930s, advertising now found itself, much as it did after World War I, the prime beneficiary of a new medium and a postwar return of consumer spending. Ultimately, the 1950s, if not as individually enriching as the 1920s had been, would be the industry’s golden age, as advertising spending quadrupled from 1950 through 1960, from 1.3 billion to 6 billion, or approximately from 11.5 billion to 54 billion in present value. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader thesis about attention as a harvestable resource, and echoes the post-WWI advertising boom discussed in earlier chapters. — connects to: Postwar American consumption was politically constructed — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1721

Broader Connections

• Postwar American consumption was politically constructed #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1721