Please join me in wishing a very Happy Birthday to the Banner Ad!
This week marks the 15th year since the first ever Banner Ad was sold on a Web site called "HotWired". There is a bit of debate over which company purchased the banner ad - AT&T, Volvo and Club Med have all been credit depending on which source you use. I think the one thing that everyone will agree on is the fact that it was definitely designed in the 1990's:
Yep, that is rumored to be first banner ad. Take a moment to take it all in.
Obviously, 15 years later it's pretty easy for us to look at this ad and give some criticism (name of the company would be nice to have, a more clear call to action, etc) but I do have to appreciate this banner ad, as this advertising innovation is the reason I, and many others, have jobs today. (Because they were right, people did click on those ads... 78% of people did in fact! Oiy, things have changed when a 'good' click through rate is now 1 - 2%!)
Pretty amazing innovation has occurred since then - not just in the design of banner ads, but also in the technology that delivers and displays ads, the data available for advertisers to use to know who to show the ads to, as well as the ease of implementation for marketers to get a display campaign up and running.
It's crazy to think that when I talk to other professionals about banner advertising, I find myself still saying "The online marketplace is changing every day; what we do today is not what we will, or should, be doing tomorrow." And this is 15 years after the first step into the display advertising world was taken. In 15 more years, I wonder if I will look back at this blog, and make similar statements about how silly our designs were, or laugh at how 'sophisticated' we all believe ourselves to be.
To that point, I would like to give my humble kudos and thanks to those that pushed for this new form of advertising to exist 15 years ago! Who would have thought a simple form of advertising would change the online marketplace as we know it??