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The First-Ever Banner Ad on the Web
- josephg 10y agoIronically it looks like you can't view that page with an add blocker installed.
- wereHamster 10y agoI use uBlock Origin and the website works.
- ashark 10y agoI'm in Safari with I-don't-remember-what adblocking (looks like I have ghostery?). Just pressing BACK when the anti-adblock message shows up lets me see the original page! That was an easy fix. Turns out I'd just been closing Atlantic pages as soon as that message appeared for no reason.
- vwcx 10y agoOn a related note, what is the first banner ad you remember seeing? For me it was the X10 camera ads around 2000: https://www.geek.com/news/x10-ads-are-useless-545130/ https://www.geek.com/news/x10-ads-are-useless-545130/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- empath75 10y agoThe AT&T ads were remarkably prescient. When they came out, computer assistants, smart watches, video calls and automatically paying tolls were far off science fiction. It makes sense that they were so early to jump on the iPhone.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 10y agoThat was a different AT&T, the one that still had an interest in trying to define the future. The AT&T Apple badgered into offering the iPhone was a hollow shell of its former self.
- jkchu 10y agoLink to the AT&T tv commercial from in the article: https://youtu.be/TZb0avfQme8?t=30 https://youtu.be/TZb0avfQme8?t=30
- Jun8 10y agoThis is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo some laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone booth video calling. But the fact that the majority of the predictions were spot on makes these oversights even more interesting. Most of what the ads predicted became reality in 10-15 years, i.e. 2003-2008. Where are the ads that predict technology for 2020?
- AnOscelot 10y agoI'm especially interested in how deeply embedded phone booths were to people who should have thought past them. A lot of SF / futurist stuff from the 60s to early 90s thought people would still be tied to fixed locations for telephone and network access. I've always wondered why that was, especially when some form of mobile phones have been around since the 80's, or even earlier with very expensive car radios which could tap into the phone network. I guess the phone booth was such a fixture of the landscape that no one could imagine a world without them.
- shuntress 10y agoI find the most interesting aspect of this observation to be the notion that we have a similar present-day blind spot and the associated exercise in predicting what is that blind spot(s).
- lstamour 10y agoHaving to use a certain physical device to interact with software? ;-)
- AnOscelot 10y agoYou're correct. That's the fun part. What's especially fun is that the blind spot is often something which has already been developed, and didn't sell well in its first iteration, or is common in prototypes and SF / futurist stuff but no one thought it would ever be widely available.
- skybrian 10y ago
- krystiangw 10y agoand the rest is history...
- cvarjas 10y agohttp://thefirstbannerad.com/ http://thefirstbannerad.com/
- rocky1138 10y agoI don't mind banner ads. I don't like the privacy-sucking invasiveness of online tracking they come with. If someone could craft a banner ad that did not have this problem, I'd whitelist their site in my ad blocker.
- janwillemb 10y agoI even remember that I installed software in the late nighties that showed a banner while you were online. The promise was that you would earn money by allowing this ad to float on your screen. I don't think I ever got payed, and, probably related, I think I removed the software shortly after installing.
- winestock 10y agoI remember feeling scandalized the first time that I saw a banner ad on the web. I also remember the epic flame wars on Usenet (sic transit gloria mundi) when Canter & Siegel made the first commercial spam campaign. At times, I have wondered how much of the Internet would shut down if ads were forbidden. Sometimes, that thought sobers me. Other times, that thought gladdens me.
- astrodust 10y agoThe "Green Card Spam" basically ended USENET by violating the spirit and agreement those participating in that system more or less adhered to. They had no respect for the norms, for basic politeness, and instead wanted nothing more than to make money, no matter how many "snowflakes" were upset. Not unlike a certain businessman running for President...
- jquery 10y agoIs there some sort of law that all conversations in 2017 must somehow involve a shoehorned reference to our current president?
- astrodust 10y agoIt's because sometimes you don't have the power to stop someone who has no regard for the rules. Design systems that can self-correct better. Give the rules more bite.
- rsync 10y ago"I remember feeling scandalized the first time that I saw a banner ad on the web." As a web dev circa 1995/1996, I clicked once on every single banner ad that I saw. Every one of them. I had it in my head that banner ads were the economic model that would support the web, and I very much wanted the web to succeed, so I was trying to "pad the numbers" for both buyers and sellers of the ads.
- hdhdhdhdjjj777 10y agoKind of funny my ad blocker refuses to load the site.
- k__ 10y agoFirst-ever banner ad and it's already click bait, lol