"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, loc. 459