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The internet is a democratic medium that, in a very short time, has revolutionized the way we communicate, inform ourselves, and relate to one another. What began as a tool for military communication soon revealed possibilities that would transform it into a global commercial powerhouse.
A Little History: From Government Project to Public Network
Until 1990, the Internet was controlled by the United States government. The agency managing the network was the N.S.F. (National Science Foundation), a non-profit organization. The Internet’s forerunner, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency), was developed by the U.S. military in the 1960s. During this foundational period, commercial advertising was strictly prohibited.
However, by the early 1990s, both the European Union and the United States began to recognize the immense potential of the network. The first commercial foray, though, would come from the “innocent” hands of two regular internet users.
The First Internet Advertisement: A Controversial Spam
Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, hold the “honor” of launching the first commercial advertisement on the Web. One day, the Phoenix-based lawyers sent a message offering their immigration services to approximately 5,000 Usenet newsgroups. Around 20,000 people responded with interest, but over 30,000 others voiced their strong rejection.
At the time, the community believed that advertising had no place in this medium. When the lawyers began receiving death threats, they abandoned the network, never to send such a message again.
A banner ad is the digital equivalent of a traditional advertisement found in a print publication or on a billboard. The first-ever banner ad was introduced by *HotWired*, the web version of *Wired* magazine, in October 1994. By the year 2000, a survey revealed an eloquent statistic: 60% of all web pages contained banner ads.
The “Click”: A Billion-Dollar Invention
In the history of internet advertising, one of the most common ways to measure an ad’s success is the famous “click.” When a user clicks a link to visit the sponsor, the advertisement has fulfilled its mission.
Procter & Gamble was the first company to put this model into practice on a large scale. In April 1996, it signed an agreement with Yahoo! that stipulated payment would be based on the number of clicks from users, not on CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions). That year, Procter & Gamble invested over eight million dollars in web advertising using this new formula.
Curiosities and Early Criticisms
The World Wide Web is not the same as the Internet. The Internet includes email, forums, and newsgroups, while the World Wide Web comprises the millions of websites that exist within it. In reality, the Internet is the set of TCP/IP protocols that allow computers across the globe to speak the same language.
Early on, web pages began suffering attacks from “hackers,” then known as “black hats.” One of the first victims was the UK’s Labour Party, whose leaders saw their website photos replaced with cartoons.
Yahoo!, as one of the first giants of the web before Google’s dominance, was also one of the first to be attacked for including advertising on its pages. An early attack involved the mass sending of emails using sophisticated auto-response programs, which caused serious financial losses for the company.
As a final curiosity, in 1995, Microsoft spokesmen literally described the World Wide Web as a “playground,” believing it would remain a niche interest. They had not yet created Internet Explorer. Today, studies show that about 40% of websites created are abandoned a year later, often due to a lack of financial income—a testament to how much the business of the internet has evolved.
