Old cigarette ads enjoyed a much greater degree of freedom than current cigarette advertisements, both in the way that they were able to display their products and in the variety of media that they were able to use to get their advertising message across. Old cigarette advertising was very active on television and on the radio, and what many who were alive during the peak of old cigarette advertisements during the fifties and sixties remember are the slogans. For example, old Camel cigarette ads / old Camel cigarette advertisements had the popular slogan "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." Winston cigarettes became the most popular cigarette brand in the country with the slogan of their old cigarette advertisement campaign: "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.", and Salem cigarettes once advertised their minty menthol taste in an old cigarette advertisement that went "Springtime... It happens every Salem."

These advertisements were not only targeted at adults but at children as well, with popular cartoon characters from the era being shown enjoying smoking. Also, the first ever televised newscast was sponsored by Camel cigarettes and had a newscaster with an ashtray in front of him and the Camel logo on his backdrop. All of this stopped in the United States at the beginning of the seventies, when the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act went into effect and banned all old cigarette advertisement on television and radio. Because of this and similar anti smoking regulations that were passed in countries around the world, the era during the mid twentieth century of old cigarette advertisement came to a close and old cigarette advertisement memorabilia became a field of collectors' items.

Every since these old cigarette advertisement techniques were banned by various governments, the media on which cigarette ads have been placed have had to change, with the primary sources of cigarette advertising now being billboards and magazine ads. There have been more changes in cigarette ad laws since the days of old cigarette advertisement, including the necessity in the United States to include the Surgeon General's Warning about the dangers of cigarette smoking on every pack, product or advertisement about cigarettes, and a series of lawsuits by the anti smoking movement that has intensified through out the intervening years has made it more difficult for tobacco companies to market to kids at schools than it was for them during the old cigarette advertisement days. Old cigarette advertisement remains a source of nostalgia, however, and a collector's field enjoyed by many.