24/7 Media packaged the web's small sites the way a television network packages its stations. In 1998 thousands of websites had audiences but no sales staff to sell ads. Advertisers did not want to call each site one by one. 24/7 Media solved both problems. It gathered many sites into a network, sold ad space across all of them, and served the ads through its own technology. It went public in New York in August 1998.

The Long Tail, Packaged

The bet was that the web's long tail of sites could be packaged and sold like a television network. 24/7 Media signed up publishers and split ad revenue with them. It used targeting tools to place ads where they would perform. Each new site made the network more useful to advertisers. It competed with DoubleClick and other networks for both advertisers and publishers, as online advertising grew into a real industry.

Real Media, Then WPP

24/7 Media priced its offering at $14 a share in August 1998. The stock rose through the boom. Then online ad spending collapsed in 2000 and 2001, and the stock fell sharply. In 2001 the company merged with Real Media and became 24/7 Real Media. WPP acquired it in 2007 for about $649 million. The deal put the network inside one of the world's largest advertising groups.

Cover: The Moon at Night, George Inness. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the moon at night (around the clock).