ABSTRACT
The question of effectiveness remained troublesome, even to an industry that embraced the social sciences and sought to apply its techniques to business. Advertisers might agree that psychology was important to their industry, but just how to tap into the mindset of mass America remained debatable. Starting in 1924, the Barney Link Poster Advertising Fellows at the University of Wisconsin began human response studies to determine the relative memory value of billboard advertisements. Although market research of consumer preferences had been conducted in the United States since the 1890s, systematic recollection surveys of billboard advertising had not been previously undertaken. By the 1930s, such studies became an important means by which the industry, like many others, sought to become more effective and efficient during lean economic times. By the 1950s, studies by professional market research companies such as Arthur Little, A. C. Nielson, and Daniel Starch were standard.1
