Modem Media named itself after the device that got people online, and it did so in 1987, years before the web. Douglas Ahlers and G.M. O'Connell started the Connecticut company to do marketing for interactive media. By the late 1990s it was one of the biggest agencies building websites and online campaigns for large corporations. When it went public in February 1999, it was majority owned by True North Communications, a traditional ad holding company, and the web was the hottest place to spend a marketing budget.

An Agency Ahead of the Web

Ahlers and O'Connell founded Modem Media in 1987. It later merged with Poppe Tyson, an agency in the True North family, and for a time traded under the name Modem Media.Poppe Tyson. The agency planned online strategy, built sites and ran digital ad campaigns. It billed clients for the work and staffed up as fast as corporate web budgets grew.

Into Digitas

Modem Media priced its IPO at $16 a share in February 1999 on Nasdaq. Part of the proceeds repaid money owed to True North. The dot-com crash cut demand for agency work. By 2003 it had about $61 million in revenue. In July 2004 Digitas, the Boston marketing firm, agreed to buy Modem Media in a stock deal worth about $200 million, which closed that October.

Cover: The Diligence, Nicolas Toussaint Charlet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a stagecoach (carrying messages).