History of Web banner

The first clickable web ad (which later came to be known by the term "banner ad") was sold by Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to a law firm.[citation needed] GNN was the first commercially supported web publication and one of the very first web sites ever.[citation needed]

HotWired was the first web site to sell banner ads in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. Andrew Anker was HotWired's first CEO. Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Partners, spearheaded the sales effort for the company. HotWired coined the term "banner ad" and was the first company to provide click through rate reports to its customers. The first web banner sold by HotWired was paid for by AT&T, and was put online on October 25, 1994.[citation needed] Another source also credits Hotwired and October 1994, but has Coors' "Zima" campaign as the first web banner. The hotwired AT&T banner ad and credits can be viewed here.Banner ads tenth birthday

In May of 1994, an early Internet commercialization pioneer, who mentored Boyce in his transition from traditional to online advertising, first introduced the concept of a clickable/trackable ad. He stated that he believed that only a direct response model—in which the return on investment of individual ads was measured—would prove sustainable over the long run for online advertising.

In spite of this prediction, banner ads were valued and sold based on the number of impressions they generated. This approach to banner ad sales proved successful and provided the economic foundation for the web industry from the period of 1994 to 2000 until the market for banner ads "crashed" and there was a radical revaluation of their value.

The new online advertising model that emerged in the early years of the 21st century, introduced by GoTo.com (later Overture, then Yahoo and mass marketed by Google's AdWords program), closely resembled the pioneer's 1994 projection.