The Bay Area Interactive Group looked back on ten years, buried the first banner and premiered the ValueClick Singers.
CBS Marketwatch EVP Scot McLernon opened Thursday's event at The City Club of San Francisco, saying that the Bay Area Interactive Group (SF/BIG) would only be "as good as our second event." He needn't have worried. Like the first event in October, last week's combo-platter of serious panel discussion, silliness and partying satisfied all comers.
Up first, a panel about the ten years since the first banner ran on HotWired -- a decade that saw interactive marketing grow from a $400,000 per year business to $9.6 billion per year. IAB founding chairman Rich LeFurgy moderated the panel, which also featured Bill Peck (formerly of Infoseek), Kate Thorp of AKQA and Upstream's Doug Weaver.
All three panelists are decade-long veterans of interactive marketing. Weaver started out as an ad director for Wired NY in 1994, selling both print and online; he then moved to Firefly from 1996 to 1997 before founding Upstream. He is credited with selling the first banner on HotWired, which ran on October 25, 1994.
(The first banner.)
Thorp started as a news anchor in Pennsylvania before jumping to interactive advertising. In 1994 she ran the Sprint account in media at J.W. Thompson in San Francisco, heard about a late-night TV program later known as CNET, and promptly became its employee #11. She was the president and CEO of Lot 21, the first agency devoted exclusively to online advertising, and later sold it to Carat Interactive. Thorp was inducted into the AAF Hall of Fame in 1997 for achievement under age 40.
Like Weaver, Peck started at HotWired, leaving in 1995 to become ad director at Infoseek, where he started selling search and is credited, in part, with introducing CPM and keyword buys. Later, he founded NetRevenue and HitNet.
Weaver, asked about how things have changed, pointed out that even though online ads started in 1994 the first adserver didn't come online until 1996. "We had advertisers who were buying in at the earliest stage just to see what happened…. Tom Messner bought advertising for three of his clients on HotWired… and wrote checks out of his own pocket." There was, Weaver continued, "A tremendous creative spirit. We were selling attention. Even back in 1994, advertisers were realizing that traditional media was failing to hold the attention of consumers."
LeFurgy asked Thorp how much of her CNET time she spent selling her vision of Internet advertising, "and how much of the vision are we still selling today?"
With CNET, Thorp replied, she was "always trying to sell the perfect Internet... Selling a Web that wasn't even up yet. We have this amazing venue to use, and we're still trying to find the right way to use it." Times have changed dramatically, Thorp continued. "Clients have gone from asking what it's all about to embracing it, buying in, and seeing it as a major part of their strategy... On the education side, really what it's about is trying to figure out what's possible." The challenge today among "agencies, clients, and publishers -- because it's truly a partnership mix -- is what's possible. The enabling technologies that are enabling us to do more and more are what is transcending the vision now."
LeFurgy then asked Peck, "how did you explain what search was at Infoseek in 1995?
Peck responded that he and colleague Steve Kirsh went through the Infoseek logs and saw that "for the first time we have an Internet property that will grow exponentially… In April of 1995, I sat down and wrote a media kit" that offered one million impressions for $15,000. Constantly asked to define the reach of interactive advertising, seeing the logs filled Peck with joy. "A million impressions for fifteen grand. All these companies… I could finally give them something that they could hold onto. I had some meat and potatoes that I could give to the advertiser." After a long struggle, Peck "was able to get Microsoft on Infoseek with a million impression buy. The search piece helped us to take new media where old media was -- with measurement."
Solemn Silliness
Weaver was then summoned from the stage, only to return moments later wearing full clerical regalia, preceded by pallbearers who carried the casket of the first 476x56 pixels banner. (This predated the IAB's 468x60 standard).
"The Right Reverend Douglas Weaver of the First Neighborhood Church of the Digital Flock" then eulogized the first static banner, tracing a full life from a modest birth in 1994, through the glory days of 1998 and into the "great darkness of market correction, falling stock prices, and ridicule and shame for the banner."
(The Right Reverend Douglas Weaver in the pulpit.)
"But the sun rose again" in 2001. "It was indeed a new day, a different day... with strong young challengers" like leaderboards, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, PointRoll, Viewpoint and Flash. The banner "entered a period of decline." By 2003, Weaver continued, "Brother Banner was old. He was tired. He was worn out. He could only look back on his days of past glory… and recall the time when he was indeed king of the media world."
(Scot McLernon and deceased friend.)
Amid cheerful cries of "Amen" and "Halleluia," Weaver concluded his mock sermon by claiming that the death of the static banner marked, "the end of the beginning; the beginning of the future," and said: "It ain't mourning time, it's morning time."
A Caroling, a caroling
In their debut performance, The ValueClick Singers then took the stage to perform "Happy Internet Holidays: Past, Present and Future" to the tune of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
(The ValueClick singers.)
Here are the lyrics:
We wish you a happy holiday
We wish you a happy holiday
We wish you a happy holiday
From us at the Click!
It was not long ago the first banner was sold
Did your campaign work? [pause] You were never told.
We wish you a festive season We wish you a festive season
We wish you a festive season
We wish you a festive season
A "Network" of Joy!
In 1999 the layoffs began
Does anybody know, what happened to Webvan?
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
From us at the Click!
We used to sell clicks with smiles and with glee
Now we sell brand and it ain't for free
We wish you a happy Hanukah
We wish you a happy Hanukah
We wish you a happy Hanukah
From us at the Click!
Broadband is the future or so we are told
Better book it all now before it's all sold
We go to Internet parties
We sing to a room of hotties
We wish you a happy holiday
And a carefree new year!
Happy holidays to you from your friends at the Click
Watch out for the egg not -- it's got quite a kick.
We hear the bar is open
We hear the bar is open
We hear the bar is open
So let's drink some beer!
Happy Holidays from all of us at ValueClick!
After that, the real partying began.
The next event will take place on January 20, 2005. You can learn more at the SF/BIG Web site.