4 ms·

> These buttons are an historic example of advertising in the earlier days of the World Wide Web. These were not “advertisements” as we now know the term. No,

by teddyh 4y ago

> These buttons are an historic example of advertising in the earlier days of the World Wide Web. These were not “advertisements” as we now know the term. No, these buttons were mostly put up by users themselves, on their own web pages. Yes, ordinary users used to have their own web pages, mostly without paid advertisements. These buttons, when they linked to commercial products, were unpaid product endorsements.

chrisco255 4y ago
Affiliate links / ads existed in the 90s. I ran a Nintendo fan site and made like $100 a month on my ads which I was ecstatic about.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Note the word “mostly”. The now-normal kind of ads were unusual.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    They were not unusual. In the 90s and early 00s, websites were littered with banner ads, popups, and toolbar downloads. They may have been unusual in the very earliest days of the web, but it didn't take long for sites to monetize with ads (was normal by late 90s).
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Ads using these buttons or on individual user’s personal web pages were unusual.
avar 4y ago
Some of them were advertisements as we know them now. In particular website authoring tools would add these unprompted as self-advertisement. That was part of the joke of "made with GNU emacs" or whatever, that you were manually adding the same advertisement the "Made with Microsoft Frontpage" users had foisted on them.
- teddyh 4y ago
  Those kind of “self-advertisements” were, first of all, relatively uncommon, so much so that they were annoying and lampooned when they appeared. They were also not what we now normally name “advertisements”. Is “Sent by my iPhone” an advertisement? Strictly speaking, yes, but the word “advertisement”, in normal language (and assuming a web context), means a banner ad or similar. These buttons were not paid banner ads, is all I’m saying.
  - avar 4y ago
    It wasn't uncommon, most websites made by these popular GUI tools retrained these banners, You're using some narrow definition of "advertising" that doesn't match common use. You don't need to be paid to be a walking billboard. When the program you were using inserted these it was analogous to license plate frame advertising today[1]. Consumers don't get paid for those either, but it's advertising for car dealerships. There was also a culture of voluntarily inserting these, but that doesn't mean some of them weren't product placement or advertising. 1. https://www.zazzle.com/car+advertisement+license+plate+frames https://www.zazzle.com/car+advertisement+license+plate+frame...
pdntspa 4y ago
Was this stuff really so long ago that we have to talk about it in such a patronizing fashion?
- teddyh 4y ago
  Yes.

by teddyh 4y ago

chrisco255 4y ago

Affiliate links / ads existed in the 90s. I ran a Nintendo fan site and made like $100 a month on my ads which I was ecstatic about.

teddyh 4y ago
Note the word “mostly”. The now-normal kind of ads were unusual.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  They were not unusual. In the 90s and early 00s, websites were littered with banner ads, popups, and toolbar downloads. They may have been unusual in the very earliest days of the web, but it didn't take long for sites to monetize with ads (was normal by late 90s).
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Ads using these buttons or on individual user’s personal web pages were unusual.

avar 4y ago

Some of them were advertisements as we know them now. In particular website authoring tools would add these unprompted as self-advertisement. That was part of the joke of "made with GNU emacs" or whatever, that you were manually adding the same advertisement the "Made with Microsoft Frontpage" users had foisted on them.

teddyh 4y ago
Those kind of “self-advertisements” were, first of all, relatively uncommon, so much so that they were annoying and lampooned when they appeared. They were also not what we now normally name “advertisements”. Is “Sent by my iPhone” an advertisement? Strictly speaking, yes, but the word “advertisement”, in normal language (and assuming a web context), means a banner ad or similar. These buttons were not paid banner ads, is all I’m saying.
- avar 4y ago
  It wasn't uncommon, most websites made by these popular GUI tools retrained these banners, You're using some narrow definition of "advertising" that doesn't match common use. You don't need to be paid to be a walking billboard. When the program you were using inserted these it was analogous to license plate frame advertising today[1]. Consumers don't get paid for those either, but it's advertising for car dealerships. There was also a culture of voluntarily inserting these, but that doesn't mean some of them weren't product placement or advertising. 1. https://www.zazzle.com/car+advertisement+license+plate+frames https://www.zazzle.com/car+advertisement+license+plate+frame...

pdntspa 4y ago

Was this stuff really so long ago that we have to talk about it in such a patronizing fashion?

teddyh 4y ago
Yes.