The majority of the Internet users today never got the chance to use it without advertisements. Indeed, even before consumers began surfing the Internet with Netscape 1.0 in 1994, Internet ads were already in place. The first ads in the World Wide Web appeared in October 1994, in Hotwired. Spam in emails also began by end the same year, and soon enough, Internet marketing also came to being. These were the precursors of what we now call as adware, which serves as an extended edition of Internet advertising.
The very history of adware began in 1996, with the implementation of a tracking methodology. The following year, Refer-it.com was launched. The search function of the site enabled tracking of the buying and surfing habits of Net consumers. The expected outcome is the fine-tuning of advertising tactics. Cookies were also made to function as a way of tracking the Net user's visits to commercial sites. Some sort of personal record were kept that were used in assisting marketing tactics.
Adware was finally developed when the programmers of free software realized that they would not earn from expecting their site users to click on the ads on their pages. While there were still giving their programs for free, they also bundled advertisements with them. Even the websites that were labeled as “non-profit” before suddenly found a way of earning and had no choice but to adapt to the system of adware. Programmers then accepted that their wares may either be for free but with adware, or adware-free when registered for a fee.
The history of adware does not end there. The different programs used to promulgate advertising became more and more advanced. In other contexts, becoming more sophisticated would have been a welcome change, but not with adware. As they become more advanced, they unfortunately become more intrusive.
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