Effects the Internet
had on
advertisements

October 27, 1994 just around a year after the introduction of the internet and production of websites was the appearance of the first ever ad, a banner on a website with the words "Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will," in a blunt font and a flashy rainbow color pallet. This was the beginning of the banner advertisement era. Once people realized that they can advertise to people who are inside their own homes, they took the opportunity. People realized that advertising online is a lot more efficient and cheaper than having a guy in the corner of a street doing arrow sign flips. The internet allowed advertisements to reach a much larger audience and how it even looks for a target audience and take over the advertisements industry which we'll go over later. The internet completely changed the advertising industry in both fascinating and detrimental ways.

We already spoke about the first appearance of an advertisement in 1994, but how did advertisements go from little boxes with words on your computer to having an entire district in New York called Time square which is plastered with large electronic billboards showcasing advertisements to everyone in the area. Well after the positive results and reaction of the first banner art published by HotWired on the internet, other companies also began to seek the same success as them which was the beginning of advertisement advancement. Just a year later in 1995, advertisers were interested in showcasing their ads to the correct audience rather than just putting them anywhere on a website with available space. This is where ad targeting began, people would begin seeing advertisements that now peaked their interest and advertisers would get more click rates. This overall benefited both the advertiser and the consumer in a positive way and was a good leap in technology. That is until we get into the year 1997 which is the year pop up ads were introduced, the name speaks for itself, theyre ads that randomly pop up on your screen, they were coded by Ethan Zuckerman but don't put all the blame on him for coding the internet's original sin because that wasn't his intention. His intention was for pop up ads to open up a new window rather than pop up on your screen. He has even made apologies for this method of advertising.

1999 - 2002 is where competition in the advertising industry really began, as search engines were getting popular advertisers were able to bid against other adverse to have their top search engine results depending on specific keywords. This was the start of a competitive industry that was only going to get more difficult. In 2010 adverse took a more passive approach and began doing native ads, where popular articles or news sites would write articles, videos, and other types of content for news, media sites, and Google. Everything after this only continued to incorporate ads, games will have a watch for a reward system where if you watch an ad you'll get an in game reward, and even our forms of entertainment have ads, when youre watching youtube you will most definitely encounter an ad or two before watching your video, and this can often be found in a lot of streaming services.

The true benefit from innovative advertisements is how much easier it is for companies or communities to advertise their product or service, it can reach a much larger audience almost anywhere in the world. This allows the company or community to advertise at a much more creative and efficient rate and reach more people than it would have without the internet. It also allows us the viewers of the ad to discover and find products or services that peak our interest that we usually didn't know of, but the internet didn't just allow us to share and find services and products easier, it also created a whole industry of jobs for us, creating a solid ad requires a team and is an effort so business and companies hire people to design and produce it for them as well as having to pay for their ad to be shared on an online platform.

Despite the great innovation the internet brought the advertisements, it also comes with a lot of downsides. Some issues we'll be going over is how some ads can be a threat to our security and information like scams and its intrusiveness and lack of relevance as well as false advertisements. Scams ads are one of the biggest issues we are dealing with, most of the people who use the internet regularly can often identify if an ad is sketchy or dangerous so it's not something that is often fallen for but were not the targets. The target for these scam ads are elderly people who may not know how to identify these scams. These scams can be from asking the user to download a free app or that they need to download a software because there's a virus in their computer and by downloading it will actually install a virus or steal personal information which can be incredibly dangerous. Some will even ask you to call a support center to help you with the "computer issue" you're having which then they'll try to guide you into sending them money or something else. This whole process of scammers is an entirely corrupted system that takes advantage of ads and the lack of knowledge from elderly people. Now ads arent 100% at fault for these scams im sure without the innovated ads we'd still be having this problem but they do add to the issue and help scammers. This video you can see a watch a man pose as a elderly person to a scammer and later get in conaatct with one who then speaks about the corruption within the scamming idustry and the police.

Now if you watched the video you most likely ran into an ad which is what we'll be going into next which is the intrusiveness and irrelevance in ads. Ads are everywhere to the point where we can't enjoy any entertainment or services without them. When we go to watch videos on youtube you'll run into ads or if you try to listen to music on a streaming platform you'll run into ads. The only way that these can be avoided is by third party ad blockers or to pay for a subscription which is really inconvenient but somewhat understandable from a business standpoint. Ads can also be irrelevant to our interest, theres is ways to avoid this which is allowing your search engine to collect data from the things you search up and watch so it can find more relevant ads from you, but this isn't ideal to everyone as they dont feel safe or comfortable with something collecting data from them.

False advertisement is also an issue that we are dealing with, it sucks when you get an ad about a product or service to just find out it doesn't contain what it promised. This is false advertising and is actually a crime. Some examples of false advertisements are companies that promise their food product to have health benefits that actually dont which can actually be dangerous to people's health or making promises that a product will benefit you in a way that isn't true. Here's a list of companies and their false advertisements.

Solutions to these scams is simply to bring more awareness to them so more people are able to identify them between real genuine advertisements. We can also tell the authority or government to put more punishment into scam advertisements and that the law revolving around that is heavily endorsed. Heres a webiste that goes over ways to identify a false and genuine ad as well as its own solutions.

The issue with ads being intrusive and irrelevant is most likely only going to be solved at a minimum level, it's such a huge part of how the industry makes money that I don't see that being something that is going away. Ways we can solve it at a more micro and personal level is installing ad blockers or to simply succumb to the bleeding jaws of capitalism and purchase the subscription to avoid the ads which is the most common way people avoid them, including me. Relevance is something that is going to improve. I would say that we're already in a solid state of having mostly relevant ads as long as you allow your browser to collect data from you, which I can understand why some people may have an issue with but I don't see a way around getting ads relevant to you without allowing some sort of data being collected about you.

For the future of ads I don't see too much of a change in how things are only how they're done. As we develop ways to avoid and block intrusive, dangerous, and false advertisements they will develop with us. The only real way we can stop these threats is to bring more awareness to the issue, we view dangerous and false advertisements everyday but just agree that it's the norm which isn't a good mindset. We won't be able to extinguish all of the potentially dangerous and false advertisements out there but some are better than none and bringing awareness to them will make the ads less successful. Maybe by bringing awareness to the issue of false and dangerous advertisements we can also solve larger issues like the large scam industry that works with a corrupted police system and solve the issue at a more national level. There's only one way we can change the future of these grim ads and the horrid effects they cause and that is by showing the world that these seemingly harmless ads are extremely dangerous if left untouched.