WEBVTT - A Brief History of Ad Blocking 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:16.280 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.239 and I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:22.800 tech are you? So today I thought we would talk 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.760 a bit about ad blocking. It's no secret that lots 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:30.760 of folks out there aren't crazy about ads, and it's 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:35.320 totally understandable whether those ads are on television or on 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:39.320 the web, or on a streaming video platform which is 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:43.600 kind of an offshoot of the web, or yes, in podcasts. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.879 Folks can get fed up with ads, and I get it. 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:49.640 Trust me, I get it when the ads are for 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.239 stuff that doesn't relate to you at all. For example, 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.040 you know, if I hear an ad that has anything 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.400 to do with sports, it's probably not gonna be very 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.240 effective on me. I'm just not a sports person. Not 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.199 that I begrudge anyone who loves sports that's awesome, It's 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:10.679 just not in my interests. But I also understand the 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.400 negative reaction people can have for ads that relate to you, 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:18.119 perhaps a bit too much, because targeted ads that you 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:20.880 might encounter on things like social network platforms, for example, 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.000 can get downright creepy, like I go back and forth. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.360 As an example of my own life. Just recently, I 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.480 was checking in on Facebook to see what my friends 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.560 were up to, and I saw an ad for a 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.880 band performing here in Atlanta. The band being Southern Culture 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.760 on the Skids. They've been around forever, and it's a 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:47.240 band I really like. So this was a very targeted ad. 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.480 It was a band I liked, specifically performing in a 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.080 venue that's not far from where I live. In fact, 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.720 it's right next to where I used to work. And yeah, 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.480 that can feel a little creepy on the flo. If 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.320 I hadn't seen that ad, I wouldn't know to get 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.120 me a ticket so that I can listen to them 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:11.160 play songs like Banana Pudden and camel Walk. But I'm 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.400 sure all of you know I mean, it's it's very clear. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.519 It's very much at the very center of ads. Ads 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.239 are a way to generate revenue, and in turn, revenue 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:25.080 can be used to fund stuff like creating content. And 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.600 if you didn't have the ads in place, you would 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.200 have to have some other means of generating revenue to 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.919 not only cover the costs that you encounter when you're 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:39.040 doing stuff like creating content because you know, just to 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:43.919 create stuff does cost money, and then you want to 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:45.960 have some money left over, right, You don't want to 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:47.800 just be able to cover your costs. You want to 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:49.880 have a little profit so that you can do things like, 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.000 I don't know, pay for rent and food and that 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.600 kind of thing. But there's no question that the history 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.160 of ads online has also It's been a history of 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:06.520 developers and advertisers and platforms making decisions that have at 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.760 times frustrated or other times caused actual harm to people 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.120 who are browsing the web. There are examples of ads 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:19.639 that have contained malware or ads that were peddling various scams. 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.280 I see a lot of those on social networks as well, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:24.760 So like when I do go to Facebook, I don't 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.440 just see ads that are targeted to me. I see 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.000 ads that are highly suspicious, and then by looking into them, 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.760 I find out, oh, this is one of four hundred 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.040 different variations of this same ad, all of them purporting 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:42.480 to be from slightly different businesses at different locations, and 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.320 all of them being a scam. There are examples of 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.840 ads that auto play video and audio, which should be 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.800 illegal in my opinion. I mean, if you're like me, 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:55.920 and I think a lot of you are. When you're 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.680 using perhaps a desktop or laptop computer browser like a 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.640 web browser, you might have lots of tabs open, Like 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.480 I could have a dozen or more tabs open at 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:09.520 a time, And if audio starts playing in one of 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.840 those tabs and I don't immediately know which one it is, 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.600 then I'm looking for that little speaker icon in the 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:17.760 tabs so I can find out which one I need 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:22.640 to mute. It is really irritating, right, So, Like, there 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.960 are lots of ways that ADS have been intrusive and 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.280 not great from a user experience. So I would argue 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.960 that there are at least some cases where there is 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.000 a very forgivable tendency to want to block or skip 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.600 ADS entirely. And that's before we even get into the 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:45.239 privacy side of things. Right now, before I go any further, 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.200 I do have to acknowledge. I mean, there's no denying it. 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:51.440 This podcast is ADS supported. You all know that I 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.760 know that there's no denying that. Without ADS, I would 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.320 not have a show. I would not have my current job. 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:02.800 If it weren't for ADS, I would be doing something else, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.839 and I would probably be really unhappy about it. Generally speaking, 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:11.400 I am against ad blocking because of how it can 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.120 impact creators and companies that make the stuff I want 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:20.240 to see and experience. I'm also against it because it 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.880 pushes some platforms to lock things behind a paywall that 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.440 makes it harder for other folks to access it without 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.360 breaking the bank. Some of us can afford to pay 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.720 those subscription fees to access content, others can't. I mean, 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:38.240 obviously that also fuels development of workarounds and loopholes to 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:40.920 try and get access to content without paying the paywall. 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:45.960 It just creates more problems. But again, creating stuff isn't free. 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.960 These companies and creators do need to generate revenue somehow, 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.520 and if folks are going to block ads, that only 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:55.160 leaves a few other options as far as revenue generation. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.520 On the privacy side of things, it is much harder 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:02.880 to fight the practice of ad blocking. I see that 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.000 as being really important. I think users do deserve to 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.920 be able to protect their privacy, and for that job 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.000 of ad blocking, I don't think I can put up 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:17.240 an argument like I don't think I can argue against it. 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.599 So while I think the ads are important in order 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.880 to help support the content you love. I also think that, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.159 you know, the practice of collecting user information and the 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.160 practice of buying and selling that in large amounts across 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:37.680 the web, that's disturbing and I cannot really, you know, 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.559 put up a good argument for it. So I feel 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.760 very complicated about the whole subject. But in the grand 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.360 scheme of things, if we boil it down, I guess 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.839 I would say I'm against ad blocking. I do not 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.599 use an AD blocker on the computer I'm recording on, 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:59.159 for example, because I think it's important that when I'm 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.320 researching stuff that the various sources I'm pulling from are 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:07.040 also getting some AD revenue in the process. However, I 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.920 do understand why people use ad blockers. So let's go 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:15.680 over the history of online ad blockers. Now, obviously that 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.720 history is somewhat tied to the history of web ads 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.280 and the web. Right. Web ads were not always a 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.400 guaranteed outcome, by the way. That's because of how the 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:31.000 Internet evolved and the entities that contributed to the creation 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.800 of the Internet. So you have to remember the Internet 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.720 was a sort of an evolutionary step of the earlier arpenet. 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.600 There are two different things, but you could say the 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:48.600 Internet was kind of spawned by the development of Arpenet. 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:53.240 Arpenet was a US government funded project that would create 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.640 the technologies necessary to allow different computer systems in different 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.960 locations to interc connect with one another and interoperate with 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:09.040 one another. This required a metric buttload of work, according 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.880 to my calculations. Researchers had to figure out how to 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.480 make very different computers talk to each other. Right, they 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.200 weren't all working on the same operating system. That in 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.560 itself was already a complicated part of the puzzle. But 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.920 they also had to figure out how to create the 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:33.000 actual mechanisms for sending information over different kinds of connections. 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:37.080 Those connections could be through things like telephone lines, or 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:41.000 through radio waves, or beaming information up to satellite, which 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.120 is still you know, radio waves, but much further away. 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:48.040 I guess the entities that made up arpinnet and later 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:53.840 the early Internet involved a lot of public organizations and 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:59.360 private organizations, but not commercial organizations, So I'm talking about 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:05.320 things like colleges and universities and government offices. Military installations 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.760 were a big part of it. Research facilities that sort 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.800 of thing, And in those early days there really weren't 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:17.679 a whole lot of attempts to commercialize networking. You know, 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.680 there were some attempts to commercialize within a specific location, 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:26.560 right to network all the machines within a business, for example, Yes, 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:30.720 but between businesses or between businesses and the world in general, 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.800 not so much. In fact, most people weren't even aware 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.800 that anything was going on at all. They just thought 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:40.679 of computers as being kind of independent silos. Like you 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:42.800 would have a personal computer, but it didn't connect to 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:46.200 anything unless maybe you were dialing into a bulletin board 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:48.840 system back in the day. Now, by the time we 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.920 get to the transition of arpanet into the Internet, which 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.360 again it wasn't like an evolutionary step. It was two 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.800 things that, you know, one developed after the other, but 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:01.920 they we had a lot of overlap. Well, one of 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:06.800 the major organizations that would contribute to Internet infrastructure was 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:11.840 the National Science Foundation or NSF. The NSF worked with 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.320 various organizations, both public and private, to build a significant 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:20.240 part of what was called the Internet backbone. Still is 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.200 the Internet backbone. NSF just isn't really part of it, 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.319 I'll explain. So you can think of the Internet as 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:29.199 kind of like the nervous system that you would find 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:31.800 in an organism, right, Like you could think of an 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:34.960 end computer as being the very end of the line 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.160 where a nerve ending happens to be. But any signals 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.400 from that computer or that nerve ending has to travel 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:44.840 to the brain, and to get there has to go 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.240 up the nerve and then connect through the spinal cord 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.600 all the way up to the central nervous system essentially 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.400 the brain, not just the central nervous system, because I 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.640 think technically that does include the spinal cord. It's been 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.440 years since I've taken biology, but you know, it has 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:02.960 to travel across the spinal cord in aid to get there. 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.679 It can't just jump to the brain. Well, the NSF 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:12.600 was contributing infrastructure that was part of the Internet's version 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:16.199 of the spinal cord, So a lot of the traffic 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:22.120 on the Internet would travel across insf's networks, which would 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:27.400 be called NSF net Here's the kicker though. In order 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:31.679 to do this, the NSF had to secure a lot 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:35.000 of funding from the US government. But in order to 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.240 do that, there were certain rules that had to be 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.520 put in place, Like Congress said, yes, we'll provide you 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.400 the funding as long as it follows these certain rules 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.199 because we don't want this to turn into some sort 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:54.520 of commercial effort as opposed to what you are telling 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.440 us you want it to be, which is a way 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:01.280 to connect supercomputing sites together. So one of the big 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:07.200 rules was that these the NSF connections were not allowed 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.840 to carry commercial traffic that was not to go across 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.280 NSF net. And that became a problem because NSF net 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:20.600 became an integral component of the Internet backbone, and that 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.920 meant that if your work wasn't related to stuff like 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:29.600 scientific research or advancing knowledge, then you started to run 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.760 into the potential that whatever you were sending would be 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.600 against the rules and technically should not be allowed to 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:41.200 go across the nsf net part of Internet infrastructure. In fact, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.520 until nineteen eighty nine, the NSF wouldn't allow any commercial 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:49.720 entities to even connect to the network. So Internet service 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.400 providers that could have potentially sprung up in various places 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:59.040 before eighty nine were stuck if the part of the 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.520 backbone that they needed to connect to was controlled by 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.920 NSF NET. Now in eighty nine, that changed. We started 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.840 to see some commercial ISPs come up, and the access 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.880 improved a little bit. In nineteen ninety one, but the 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.559 general restrictions on commercial traffic across NSF net would remain 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:20.280 in place until nineteen ninety five. That was a sticking 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:23.800 point for the development of the Internet. It wasn't illegal 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.960 to run commercial traffic over the Internet in general. So 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.480 if your connections just completely bypassed the nsf net, like 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:35.480 if in order to complete a commercial transaction between point 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:39.120 A and point B, you never had to cross any 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.000 of the network controlled by nsf net, that's fine. There 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.920 was nothing inherently illegal about using the Internet for commercial purposes. 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:51.959 The problem was the actual infrastructure was not supposed to 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.400 do that, at least in parts of it, and that 0:13:54.760 --> 0:14:00.439 is what complicated everything. Now it was a huge joble 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.360 The solution ended up being the creation of a new 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.680 privatized network architecture largely built on top of what was 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.600 learned through creating nsf net, but independent of nsf net. 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.120 It essentially meant all these companies had to build a 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.640 almost like a copy of nsf net in order to 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:25.240 handle all that traffic and allow NSF to decommission nsf 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:29.400 net in nineteen ninety five, and now traffic would just 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.920 move across this other privatized architecture and there would be 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:38.200 no limitation to the know to commercial traffic. Now, there's 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.880 a lot more to that particular story. In fact, I 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:45.480 could do a full episode about the entire drama around 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:50.560 the transition of the Internet from a purely sort of 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:55.680 research based entity into a commercial entity, But for our purposes, 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.760 we're going to leave that part there. Let's talk about 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:02.720 the Web and web ads, because that's what this is 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:06.280 really about, right, Okay, I've set it up. When we 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.280 come back, i'll talk a little bit about the birth 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:13.080 of the World Wide Web and how that eventually led 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.040 to the creation of web ads and thus ad blocking. 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:22.120 But first, and trust me, I understand the irony of this. 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:36.480 We need to take a break to thank our sponsors. Okay, 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.640 we're back. So the beginning of the Worldwide Web. That 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.120 starts with the guy who's credited for inventing the whole 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.680 darn thing. He was a researcher who was working for CERN, 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.840 you know, the same scientific research center that runs the 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.440 Large Hadron Collider, and his name is of course Tim 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.880 berners Lee. Tim felt that we were really missing a trick, 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.160 you know, we had all these important documents. He was 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:06.840 probably mostly thinking about scientific documents. But we had all 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.440 these incredibly important documents, and they were stored on different 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.440 computers all over the world. And a lot of these 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:17.400 documents related to one another, or they each related to 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.520 common topics, but they were all distinct. They were disconnected 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:23.960 from each other. But what if you could build in 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.920 a way that would allow related documents to have a link, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.600 to share a link with each other. You know, maybe 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.760 you've got a document that's about one research project about 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:38.200 particle physics, and you've got another research project about particle 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.920 physics that's slightly different, But combining the two would provide 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.440 future researchers with a lot more knowledge that would be 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.960 beneficial to more work. If you were able to link 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.960 those two documents together, that could be a really beneficial thing. 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:58.040 So Tim developed hyperlink technology, which would do just what 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.320 he was thinking. You could create a digital link between 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:05.280 different digital documents and navigate from one to the other 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:09.680 using some sort of client software. This was the basis 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.440 for the World Wide Web, and berners Lee was able 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.320 to convince CERN, which technically owned the research because it 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:20.439 was his employer, to release this technology to the world 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.600 in the public domain, rather than to sell it off 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.280 and have it risk becoming some sort of proprietary software 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.000 which would inherently limit its utility. Now, the world's first 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.880 website launched in nineteen ninety one on August sixth. Then 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:39.840 it was a text based document describing the basics of 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.960 the World Wide Web project, including how hypertext links work. 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.800 The very early days of the web were really all 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.600 about text based documents. However, it didn't take too long 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:55.240 for that to change. It did happen somewhat gradually because 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:57.960 keep in mind, outside of universities and research centers and 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.479 the like, those few people who had Internet access were 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.840 depending on stuff like dial up modems, So if you 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:08.000 were including things like images, it really slowed down how 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:10.879 long it took for a web page to load into 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.920 a browser. By the end of nineteen ninety three, there 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:19.800 were only around three thousand websites total. Now that was 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:21.760 still a growth spurt, because in ninety two it was 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:25.720 more like ten websites. And also in nineteen ninety three, 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:30.199 before the NSF net was shut down, we would start 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:35.680 to have our first web centric platform that would support ads. 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.400 And that platform wasn't itself a spinoff of a company 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.680 that at the time was called O'Reilly and associates. These days, 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.120 it's just known as O'Reilly Media. It was founded by 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:51.320 Tim O'Reilly and the company originally focused on creating technical writing, 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:55.080 technical documents and consulting that kind of stuff, and a 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.840 lot of different documents and even events have come out 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.320 of O'Reilly. The company is one of the reasons the 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:03.920 concept of web two point zero even became a thing. 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.560 For example, but we want to talk about the Global 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:14.280 Network Navigator or GNN. O'Reilly launched the GNN website in 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.240 May of nineteen ninety three, and essentially it was an 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:23.200 online magazine. In fact, originally it had a quarterly publication schedule, 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.600 so it would only change like four times a year. 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:28.680 But you have to remember, in the early days of 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.760 the web, web pages typically were static. You know, you 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.560 didn't have sites updating content every day, let alone multiple 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:41.080 times a day. Some websites would upload, and that was that. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.040 It just served as almost like a Yellow Pages ad 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:46.640 or something. It didn't change. Also, I don't know how 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:48.439 many of you know what a Yellow Pages ad is. 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.880 Moving on. So GNN was already a little different from 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.600 other web pages, right because it would actually feature updated content, 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:00.199 though only a few times a year, and and this 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.480 content largely focused on features about the blossoming technology of 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:09.280 the World Wide Web. Another way that GNN set itself 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.600 apart from other web pages is that O'Reilly decided they 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:18.520 would allow for online advertising. GNN would offer companies a 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:23.679 chance to secure some space, some real estate on the 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.600 web page that would be dedicated to advertising to a 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:31.919 potential customer. And you could use hyperlink technology to facilitate 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:36.000 traffic to a different destination where presumably someone who's visiting 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:40.199 GNN could become a paying customer of the company that 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:44.679 advertised on GNN. Well, this set up conditions for AT 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.800 and T to purchase the very first web banner. At 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:51.320 least as far as I can tell, it was a 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.840 brave new world. This was in nineteen ninety four when 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.639 the first web banner ended up being displayed to the world, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.720 and it meant there was advertising on the Internet now. 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.440 It didn't take long for there to be a kind 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.119 of land rush to the web. You know how a 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.920 lot of companies really jumped into the whole web three 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:19.600 slash metaverse, slash blockchain, slash NFT bandwagon not that long ago. 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:21.520 And how despite the fact that there were a lot 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:25.800 of unanswered questions about the technologies in general. There was 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:28.760 this perception that if you didn't get in there right away, 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:32.439 you were going to be left behind. That's kind of 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.000 what the Internet in general and the Web in particular 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.400 was like around this time, and there was a bit 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.520 of this struggle, this rush to get an online presence 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:47.840 among various companies, and in turn that really picked up 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:51.199 the pace when the last restrictions on commercial internet traffic 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:55.920 went away once NSF net decommissioned. So in nineteen ninety five, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:00.520 AOL purchased GNN from O'Reilly for the print lease some 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:04.480 of eleven million dollars, and in that same year a 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.720 couple of guys named Dwight Merriman and Kevin O'Connor came 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:12.680 up with a business plan. See GNN showed that online 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.919 advertising was a very real possibility, but a lot of 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.720 companies wouldn't have the know how or the resources to 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:23.000 facilitate advertising on their web pages. So what was needed 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:28.639 was a dedicated company to handle stuff like ad sales 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:34.040 and performance tracking, you know, partnering advertisers with web pages, 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.439 all that kind of stuff, running ads across networks of sites, 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.560 not just on a single page and even getting into 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:46.040 the earliest, earliest days of what would become targeted advertising. 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:49.960 So the two created a service that kind of did 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:53.440 all these things, and they called it Double Click. Kevin 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.960 Ryan would become an early investor in the service, and 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:00.840 later on would become CEO of the company itself. Now 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:03.840 this isn't the Double Click story either, but the company 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:08.200 did pioneer an era in which advertising would proliferate across 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.119 the web. And if you want to know what actually 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.560 happened to double click itself, Google announced that it would 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:17.280 purchase double Click back in two thousand and seven for 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:23.680 the even more princely sum of three point one billion dollars, 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:28.200 showing that web advertising had truly become a gargantuan business, 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:31.960 and it's now part of Google's overall advertising operations. But 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:34.920 let's get back to ads and ad blocking, and we're 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:40.840 back into the mid nineteen nineties. So web advertising begins 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:45.640 to gainsteam. Some folks start to develop ad blindness already, 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:48.240 because a lot of these ads were appearing either as 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:51.280 a banner ad across the top or the bottom of 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:55.280 a web page, or along the side like in a column, 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:57.040 either to the left or to the right of the 0:23:57.080 --> 0:23:59.160 main content of the web page. A lot of people 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.240 just got really good it not paying attention to that stuff, 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:06.280 but some folks were still frustrated that ads were showing 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:08.720 up when they were trying to just surf the web. 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:13.760 A group of students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina started 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:17.080 to come up with their own idea for a company. 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:20.840 So rather than selling ad space and slapping banner ads 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:24.320 all over the web, they were creating an extension to 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:27.840 the web browser Netscape, which at the time was almost 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:31.080 synonymous with the Worldwide Web itself. It's easy to forget now, 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:35.960 but there was a time where Netscape was essentially the 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:40.840 definitive web browser for the Internet. That would change, and 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:44.159 things would change dramatically. Like today, you could argue that 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.080 Google Chrome is one of the biggest ones out there, 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:51.080 but there's still there's better competition now than there was 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:55.480 back when Netscape was really dominating the landscape. Now, this 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:59.680 extension that the students created would actually block banner ads 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:03.399 from showing up in a user's web browser. The leader 0:25:03.440 --> 0:25:06.160 of this group of radical revolutionaries was a guy named 0:25:06.240 --> 0:25:09.560 James Howard. From why I understand, he wasn't even a 0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:12.560 computer science major. He was actually focused on studying drama 0:25:12.800 --> 0:25:15.720 as a theater, not as in, let me just walk 0:25:15.840 --> 0:25:17.480 up to the stranger in public and see if I 0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:21.359 can provoke a wild reaction. So Howard and his fellow 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:25.720 students ended up creating a company called Privnet, and the 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:29.160 tool they made, the ad blocking tool, got the name 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:34.520 Internet Fast Forward. Why Internet fast Forward, Well, we got 0:25:34.520 --> 0:25:37.879 to understand how web ads work, right, So when you 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:40.280