Most websites in 1999 had more ad space than they could sell. Flycast bought the leftovers. The San Francisco company pooled unsold banner slots from more than 780 sites and resold them, unbranded, to direct marketers and online stores that cared about clicks and sales, not prestige. Sites earned money on space that would have sat empty. Advertisers got a big audience at a low price. In May 1999 Flycast took that idea to Nasdaq.

A Market Maker for Banners

Flycast began operations in April 1996, when the web ad business was a few years old. It called itself a market maker for response-oriented advertising. Advertisers could buy across the whole network or pick categories, and Flycast's software reported what each campaign returned. Because the ads ran without the site's name attached, publishers could sell remnant space without undercutting their own sales teams. The bet was that web advertising would be judged like direct mail, by measurable response.

Swept Into CMGI

Flycast priced its offering at $25 a share in May 1999 and listed on Nasdaq under FCST, in the thick of the dot-com boom. A few months later CMGI, the Massachusetts internet holding company, agreed to buy it in an all-stock deal. The purchase closed in early 2000, and CMGI folded Flycast into its Engage advertising business. When the bubble burst that year, the value of that stock fell with it.

Cover: Fly Fishing, Saranac Lake, Winslow Homer. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for fly fishing (Flycast).