[mvkel]

What year would that have been? The first dot com boom and bust was entirely ad-driven, and before that, the internet wasn't much of an internet.

[freedomben]

Yep, when I created my first website in the mid 90s, ads were definitely already a thing. It was pretty bad even, worse than nowadays because there weren't any adblockers and ads would abuse the living hell out of frames and popup windows.