It is not the advertising model that corrupted the internet. It’s the advertising model that was corrupted by the internet’s scale. When you can reach a billion people for free, the only way to get paid is to hold their attention hostage. This is how we ended up with an entire economy built on interruption.
The first banner ad appeared on HotWired in 1994. It was an AT&T ad that asked ‘Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE?’ and linked to a virtual tour of the world’s museums. Forty-four percent of people who saw it clicked. That click-through rate would never be seen again.
What happened next is a story about unintended consequences. The banner ad gave rise to the click, the click gave rise to tracking, tracking gave rise to surveillance, and surveillance gave rise to the attention economy. Each step seemed logical at the time. Each step made the web worse.