Understanding the Unplanned Internet - How Ad Tech is Broken By Design 101
Channel: Aram Zucker-Scharff
Date: 2019-01-04

The first banner ad. Created for an AT&T advertising campaign in 1994 it is perhaps the most influential thing to ever happen to the internet. No single thing has done more to change, deform, alter, or make sustainable the web. When it launched, it had a 44% CTR - that’s Click Through Rate. That means that almost half the people who saw this ad did exactly that, clicked right there.

It was made with the best of intent. The idea was to make a uniquely internet style of ads. It would take you to a different place, it would work within the structure of the web, but also connect you to advertisers and content and experiences in an entirely new platform for communications.

It would be everywhere in short order and as it was being duplicated across the internet there would be a problem because the people who went on to implement it didn’t think much about what it could do or how it could work. This is the story of how it all went wrong and how that unanticipated set of flaws and ethical challenges deformed the entire internet.

Follow me on Twitter for more about the intersection of ad tech and media - https://twitter.com/chronotope

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International