In March, 1995, about 18 months after the birth of INTERACTIVE and about
nine months after the "shot heard 'round the advertising world," we find that
Advertising Age was taking stock. In a twelve-page special section called "The
New Business of New Media", the trade magazine reported more surprises. The
lead article was "Building a new industry". It began,

Interactive media. Skeptics call it the great zero-billion-dollar
industry, full of pipe dreams and fancy schemes, overwhelming type
and underwhelming results. But that description . . . misses the mark
completely. There are already billions of dollars being made . . . .

To get to "billions of dollars" - 11.1 billion, to be exact - Ad Age totaled
revenues from eight activities:

Note the order of magnitude: Videogames on top, interactive TV - the
innovation that was to "alter the way Americans inform, entertain and educate
themselves" - in the cellar. For perspective, remember that in 1994, revenues
from old-fashioned linear television were about $29 billion (AA, 8/7/95, 13).

In its discussion of this reordered industry, INTERACTIVE featured the World
Wide Web. It said,

For marketers, the Web has swiftly emerged as a key new-media
platform. By the end of last month, there were more than 2,500
commercial sites on the Web, many of them home to such
mainstream brand names as MCI, Reebok, Volvo, and Club Med. In
the first two months of this year, Advertising Age ran more stories
about the Web than it did in all of 1994. (AA, 3/13/95, S4)

-10-