For various reasons, the design, marketing and advertising startups sprang up around, and especially below, Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building. This entrepreneurial “scene” acquired the nickname Silicon Alley, a sobriquet that many people claim credit for but which owes its popularization primarily to New York–based advertising startup DoubleClick. DoubleClick, founded by Kevin O’Connor and Dwight Merriman, would create the first large-scale advertising network and marketplace on the web, brokering and delivering the banner ads that would generate revenue for many of the
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