Timeline of online advertising

Okay kiddo, so you know how when you play games or watch videos on the internet, you sometimes see pictures or videos of things that people are trying to sell you? That's called advertising.

Now let's talk about the timeline of advertising on the internet. When the internet first started in the 1990s, there weren't a lot of people using it yet, so there wasn't really any advertising on it.

But as more and more people started using the internet, advertisers realized it could be a great place to advertise. So in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they started putting ads on websites. These were usually banner ads - you know, those rectangular pictures near the top or bottom of websites?

Then, as more people started using search engines like Google, advertisers realized they could put ads in search results. So if you searched for "dog toys," you might see an ad for a company that sells dog toys.

Around the same time, a new type of advertising started becoming popular: pop-ups and pop-unders. These are ads that appear in a new window when you visit a website. They were annoying and lots of people didn't like them.

In the mid-2000s, a new kind of advertising called "pay-per-click" became popular. This is when advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. This made online advertising more efficient and cost-effective.

Then came social media - sites like Facebook and Twitter. These sites were designed for people to connect with each other, but advertisers quickly realized they could advertise on these sites too. So now when you scroll through your Facebook feed, you might see ads for things like clothes or video games.

Today, online advertising is everywhere - on websites, search engines, social media, and even in mobile apps. But advertisers have to be careful to make sure their ads are not too intrusive or annoying, because people don't like that.

So that's the timeline of online advertising - from simple banner ads to sophisticated ads on social media and mobile devices.