If you’re a working creative in the industry, you’ve most likely created your fair share of banner ads. If you don’t remember or weren’t around—ever wonder what the first banner ad looked like?
According to a 2017 article by The Atlantic, the widely agreed upon first banner ad was a part of a 1994 campaign called "You Will" for AT&T.
Hosted by HotWired, it had a 44% clickthrough. "The ad set off a chain reaction that altered the course of the advertising industry—and any other industry that overlapped with it. ('It’s almost like a prank that was played by the technology industry on the media industry 20 years ago,' Chris Dixon, the tech investor, told The New York Times in 2014.)'"
How far we've come.
Bringing users from the banner ad to a landing page was a landmark event for advertisers. It got them to see what else customers would do. Hence, how ever-present they are today.
Of course, there has been backlash ever since, due to the eventual creation of "pop-up" ads that are even more disruptive.
"The person who created the first pop-up ad is similarly sheepish about what he wrought. 'I’m sorry,' Ethan Zuckerman, who coded the first pop-up ad, wrote for The Atlantic in 2014. 'Our intentions were good.'"
For more reading, visit the original article from The Atlantic.
For the latest on what AT&T is cooking up, head here.