NewsDirect Features Adland - "Advertising community hits the 35.000 members mark"

Advertising community hits the 35.000 members mark reads the headline at NewsDirect.

The worlds largest community for advertising people, ad-rag.com, has hit 35.000 members. The site is run by the Swede Åsk Wäppling from [an office in the Danish capitol city of] Copenhagen, and it's always been her goal to keep the community financed by members rather than advertising. It has succeeded.

Ad-rag.com has become the preferred virtual meeting place for advertising people from around the world. The archives contain over 17.000 advertising commercials, plenty of news, a forum and networking possibilities. 13 million people use the site in their jobs and on their free time. More and more [people] arrive every day. "It's free to join up as a member, but if you want unlimited access to all the advertising commercials you'll donate two Euros a month", Åsk Wäppling explains, from the center of Copenhagen she uses most of her time to service members and maintain the server network the site runs on. "You only donate for the time that you wish to have access to the archives. All the money goes to the large amount of bandwidth, site development and hardware. It works, and I believe that the many advertising people that use the site appreciate an "ad-free" breathing space on the web." says Åsk Wäppling who started that site in 1996 when she lived in San Francisco. One of the biggest 'hits' on the site is the complete archive of advertisements of Super Bowl Commercials from the last 30 years. No other site has a collection so complete and it attracts millions of surfers. The many involved and active members are also keeping the large part of the ad-news flowing. In this way ad-rag is a popular alternative to the traditional trade press, that exists internationally for the advertising and marketing businesses.

Link to Newsdirect and Link in waybackmachine.