Barn advertisement

A barn advertisement is an outdoor advertisement painted onto the exterior of a roadside barn. Advertisers take advantage of the barns' prominence in rural landscapes, paying their owners for the right to paint and maintain logos and slogans on them. Painters of barn advertisements and other murals are known as "wall dogs". Once a common form of billboard advertising in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States during the early– to mid–20th century, barn advertisements have faded into obscurity, as many of these rural ghost signs fall into disrepair, along with the structures that bear them.

Advertisers

Common barn advertisers include local roadside attractions, restaurants, and chewing tobacco manufacturers.

The Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company is credited with popularizing the medium. The company began advertising their products on the sides of buildings in 1890. By 1925, they had moved to advertising on Mail Pouch Barns. At the program's height in the early 1960s, some 20,000 barns in 22 states displayed Mail Pouch advertising, with the greatest number in Ohio. Most of the barns were painted by Harley Warrick. Competitors such as Red Man and Hillside Tobacco also painted barns in smaller numbers.