19 October 2004
Happy 10th birthday internet advertising….
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Advertising / Marketing .
Can you believe it….its been ten years since the first banner ad, designed by Modem Media for AT&T, was placed onto the HotWired website in October of 1994.
Could anyone believe that back in 1994, online advertising would become a multi-billion dollar business within 10 years??
Could anyone believe that banner ads would be animated, that they would be capable of containing audio and video and fluid cartoon like animation courtesy of a yet to be invented technology in 1994 called Flash (originally called Future Splash Animator)??
Did anyone see or think that banner ads would be able to draw data out of databases or XML files and stay updated automatically??
How about the fact that we would be buying text only ads on a search engine that would have one of the most successful floats of an internet company in history or maybe even buying text ads that are embeded into RSS feeds in something called a blog??
Could anyone believe that the web would become so pervasive that it would be accessible from not only your desktop computer, but also from your mobile phone, from your TV and even from your car??
The answer to all these questions is of course not…
The whole dotcom era was initially based on the perception of being able to make money not out of web sites, but out of selling online advertising on those web sites…and hey…it worked for a while…we all drank from the venture capital trough and enjoyed it while it lasted…but the business has grown up (or so they keep trying to tell us) and the web and other internet technologies are undergoing a major change right under everybodies noses.
We are still in the early stages of seeing how advertising will impact blogging…not only text based blogging but also audioblogs / podcasts and the inevitable videoblogs that are coming our way…the “times are a changin” as Bob Dylan said, and they have been for the past 10 years…where will it all end up?? Who knows…but its been a fun ride and it can only get more interesting. :)
Heres to another great 10 years…
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