As Americans came online in increasing numbers, the Internet promised to capture more and more of their time and attention. It was expected that advertisers would logically shift their advertising spend to try to advertise against this new attention center. And sure enough, the ad money chased the eyeballs. In 1995, around $50 million was spent on banner advertising on the web.25 By 1997, online advertising passed $1 billion for the first time.26 That was a mere rounding error compared to the $60 billion corporations spent on advertising across all mediums that year. But everyone anticipated
...more
