The Ad Server's 20th Birthday!
My post on the Ad Server's 20th birthday was published in AdExchanger today. The focus was on the waves of change that have hit the digital advertising world since those early days. Believe it or not, it all began with a condom ad!
The first ad server is actually preserved in a shadow box in my home office (truncated pic of "Mango" posted above). And there are a bunch of great sources available online to learn about that era:
- If you are interested in audio, there's an oral history of the early days of digital advertising and the first ad server put together by the Internet History Podcast when they did a live interview with me in 2014. Brian Mccullough did an excellent job with the interview, as he does with some many of his oral histories.
- If you are interested in short, but more focused piece on the history of how the first ad server was developed, I wrote a blog post on the topic in 2009.
- And, of course, Wikipedia has an article on the ad server that is pretty accurate.
Do you have recollections of those early days? How do you think digital advertising has changed since then? Leave me a comment here or on my blog to let me know.
I love telling people "I know the guy who invented advertising on the web." You should see the reactions I get. Pretty polarizing. For the ones who feel like advertising is a burden, I remind them that porn can't pay for everything;-)
I remember Mango! Do you remember Mocha, our first campaign management server?
Thanks for reminding me that I have been in the industry for so long and still trying to figure out how to harness the sames challenges we had at the time(it actually got worst to be honest) !
I can't believe it's been 20 years! I remember trekking to the GSB computer lab (they had awesome Macs) to make those Condom Country banner ads like it was yesterday.
nice post dave...you are the dean acheson of ad serving! hope all is well. - stu