Few know, but an exact date exists. The first advertising banner went on line on 27 October 1994 to promote the AT&T telephone company “You Will” campaign. The announcement “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” appeared on Hotwired, the newly-born on-line site of the monthly Wired.
The historic date signalled the start of a radical change. In little over fifteen years the banner has come a long way. At the beginning it was a simple static image which was used as a reminder in support of television or print campaigns. Then, in the second half of the nineties, it started to get animated to attract attention, like a short commercial. Today, with broad-band connections and large screens becoming widespread, the true banner – the 468x60 pixel version – has started its relentless decline to make way for multimedia rich-media and impacting formats: overlays, interstitials, expanding, leaderboards, skyscrapers...
Today the worldwide on-line advertising market is worth over 50 billion dollars. An enormous amount in continuous growth, despite the difficult economic period.
