I had a Geocities site around 1999 and I remember that adverts started appearing on the site around that time. At first (if I remember correctly) it was opt-in,

I had a Geocities site around 1999 and I remember that adverts started appearing on the site around that time. At first (if I remember correctly) it was opt-in, but then at some point they just started appearing anyway. Problem was, this was a long time ago when DOM-manipulation was not so easy, and with Geocities there was no common page template - and hence nowhere obvious to put adverts that would work for every geocities site. I think the solution they came up with was little floating pop-up windows that appeared over the top of the edges of the page. It looked ugly, and was also pretty buggy. No one would make a blog/homepage site like Geocities these days without ringfencing somewhere to put the ads. How things have changed.