The Evolution of Internet Ads: How Did They Start?
Nowadays, getting ads on the internet is just as common as getting milk with your cereal. Except you don’t choose ads, you just get them. But it wasn’t always like this.
Let’s take a trip back in time all the way to 1994, the year where the first online ads ever appeared to learn a bit more about their history. Sit tight because this might be a bumpy ride and prepare to discover the evolution of internet ads.
The Start of an Era
The first ads to ever appear online were in the form of banners. It all began with a simple graphic posted on the website HotWired, the former version of Wired, back in October of 1994. They needed to find a way to generate revenue to pay their writers, so they decided to sell space on their page to advertisers the same way you would do it on a physical magazine, with a cost for a set time period. And it was a success.
The company AT&T paid $30,000 to get their banner ad featured on the top of their website for three months. It was very primitive in message and design, but it worked like a charm.
Looking at it now you might be thinking, how did people fell for that? Well, it was the first of its kind and it knew how to make an impression. This ad had an outstanding click-through-rate of 44%. Today, most ads can only get close to 0.06% on average.
If you clicked on the ad it would redirect you to a very early landing page of AT&T. Once there, you could click on various links to view information about art museums around the world.
As you can see, this ad wasn’t really trying to bombard you with a product or special offers. Instead, it focused on giving users some valuable content that they might find interesting to make them remember their brand.
“Let’s not sell somebody something. Let’s reward them for clicking on this thing brought to you by AT&T”.
Craig Kanarick, digital consultant of the campaign.
If only every brand thought about it this way, we wouldn’t have a problem today. It was a good idea at first to allow free access to websites, but as more businesses joined the party, ads started to get more intrusive.
Organized advertising started to spread in the following years, but the most famous or perhaps infamous revolution of early ads came out in 1997. The rise of the terrible pop-ups.
If you want to read more about their history and keep up with the evolution of ads, make sure to tune in next week for Part 2!
Until then you can browse ad-free with Online.io, don’t forget that our demo is already available for Google Chrome. Check it out!
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