World's first banner ad still performs really well.

World's first banner ad still performs really well.

Remember the AT&T "You will" campaign? The one that had the worlds first banner ad with it? We celebrated its tenth birthday, almost ten years ago here (gasp!) and with any luck we'll be cheering in Jolt Cola next year for the 20th too. The first site to run that ad was Hotwired, and the campaign began on October 24, 1994, when the internet as we know it was still in diapers. Dan Barker decided to test how this ad performs today, so he ran it again. It performed really well. Not as well as the original run did, according to mashable that got an astonishing 44% clickthrough rate, numbers unheard of today.

As you can see there, it started off slow & built up a little bit. If you look closely, you can also see that the CTR (‘clickthrough rate’) stayed consistently over 3%. I’ve picked out the highest performing day there in the little callout box. As you can see, it got a massive 1.10% clickthrough rate on the Saturday.


Copywriter: Joe McCambley, Creative Director, Modem Media
Graphic Design: Craig Kanarick, Associate, TANGENT Design (pre-razorfish)
Executive Producer & Art Director: Otto Timmons, VP, TANGENT Design
Contributors: Brent Hood, CEO, TANGENT Designsrc="adland.tv/anner-ads-tenth-birthday/1098886683">We celebrated its tenth birthday, almost ten years ago here (gasp!) and with any luck we'll be cheering in Jolt Cola next year for the 20th too. The first site to run that ad was Hotwired, and the campaign began on October 24, 1994, when the internet as we know it was still in diapers. Dan Barker decided to test how this ad performs today, so he ran it again. It performed really well. Not as well as the original run did, according to mashable that got an astonishing 44% clickthrough rate, numbers unheard of today.

As you can see there, it started off slow & built up a little bit. If you look closely, you can also see that the CTR (‘clickthrough rate’) stayed consistently over 3%. I’ve picked out the highest performing day there in the little callout box. As you can see, it got a massive 1.10% clickthrough rate on the Saturday.


Contributors: Brent Hood, CEO, TANGENT Design

Great! You’ve successfully signed up.

Welcome back! You've successfully signed in.

You've successfully subscribed to AdLand.

Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in.

Success! Your billing info has been updated.

Your billing was not updated.