Shock Realisation: WebCam is Sponsoring the Entire Web!

10 February 2002, 17:37 GMT

If this tiny little plastic thing goes, the entire Internet goes with it...

The web portal "industry" might be sprawling and disparate, but all its associated sites and portals have one rather important thing in common: they rely on advertising fees from banner and pop-up ads.

12 months ago, the industry watchdog WebDog.com guided its members gently but firmly towards a general consensus that banner advertising just wasn't working. To quote the industry watchdog's report: "Those bastard web surfers are just too goddamn lazy to click on our ads."

However, the report went on to suggest that pop-up (and pop-under) ads were likely to be much more effective - not in increasing click-through rates, but simply "annoying the hell out of those ungrateful little shits." The report added that the proliferation of pop-up ads should help to prevent users from "taking our free services for granted."

Amidst the excitement that swept the industry following publication of this report, one vendor in particular began to publicise its wares via pop-up ads on an increasing number of websites: WebCam, Inc.

Last week, a web user in Illinois suddenly uncovered the shocking truth: WebCam now sponsors every single free-access website and portal on the entire worldwide Internet!

The implications are huge. With so many websites entirely dependent on WebCam for their survival, the Web has almost overnight become a remarkably fragile and needy place, governed by a commercial autocracy that demands (and gets) all manner of annoying tricks and gimmicks to force their headache-inducing strobe-effect ads in front of disbelieving users' blinking eyes.

If WebCam were to suddenly withdraw their advertisments, this sudden loss of revenue stream would cause almost the entire Web community to disappear in a puff of bankruptcy.

Thus, the Illinois user chirped worriedly, the Web would suddenly find itself back in the so-called "Stone-Age of the Information Age" (sic), populated only by personal web pages, tired Netscape users' "Why NS is still the best" ironic tribute sites, educational establishments, not-for-profit sites, and MSN.

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