Today marks the 15th anniversary of the earliest advertising Banner Ads appearing on the internet. The banners were placed on the web’s first commercial digital magazine hotwired.com. They received a massive 78% click through rate – which is unheard of these days.

The campaign, which launched in 1994, involved six companies placing banner ads on the website. These were MCI, Volvo, ClubMed, 1-800-Collect, AT&T and Zima. As you can imagine, the graphics were very basic. AT&T’s call to action was “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? You will!”

Online display advertising has progressed immensely since these first creations. Banner Ads now involve animation, sound, video and human interaction. They expand, scroll, pop up, peel over or even float and hover over the web page. How interesting, the first reluctant online Banner Advertising campaign started a $24 billion dollar industry

Article Source (http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=139964)