Prodigy pioneered online advertising as its core business model in 1991

Evidence

Prodigy was a fast-growing operation founded by the odd combination of Sears, CBS, and IBM. It styled itself as the visionary alternative, the kind of place where managers would say things like “The future is here.” Aiming for mainstream consumers, Prodigy was betting that, for most users, online would be a world of shopping and entertainment, and that whoever had the most and best of both to offer would win. It also foresaw the importance of being an attention merchant, by betting on online advertising as its business model. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 699

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s attention-industry history project; Prodigy is an early attention-merchant antecedent to Google and Facebook. — connects to: Prodigy pioneered advertising, subscription content, and online shopping models that later giants adopted — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 741; Advertising revenue exceeding costs created the viable mass media business model — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 40
• QUESTION: How did Prodigy’s online advertising model actually operate given 1990s bandwidth and display constraints?

Broader Connections

• Prodigy pioneered advertising, subscription content, and online shopping models that later giants adopted #corroborates (0.95) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 741
• Advertising revenue exceeding costs created the viable mass media business model #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 40