---
title: "The internet in 1994"
description: "The first banner ad appears, and its click-through rate is 44 per cent. 2,738 websites, 14.4 kbps at home, and what a download actually took."
url: https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/1994/
site: "At One Place"
---

# The internet in 1994

**The internet in 1994: The first banner ad appears, and its click-through rate is 44 per cent.**

2,738 hostnames · A 14.4 kbps modem. 28.8 arrived at the end of the year and cost a fortune.

The banner ad AT&T ran on HotWired in October is generally counted as the first, and it reportedly drew a click-through rate of around 44 per cent — a number that has never been approached since and that says more about novelty than about advertising. Yahoo began as a hand-maintained list of links, which was a workable way to index a web of a few thousand sites and became impossible within three years. Netscape was founded by people who had built Mosaic and wanted to do it commercially.

## The numbers

- **Websites:** 2,738 hostnames responding to HTTP
- **Typical connection:** 14.4 kbps — A 14.4 kbps modem. 28.8 arrived at the end of the year and cost a fortune.
- **A gigabyte of storage cost:** $1,500, in 1994 dollars

## How long things took to download

*Assuming the connection ran at its rated speed throughout, which it did not. Real dial-up throughput after protocol overhead was typically 10 to 20 per cent below the modem's rating.*

| What | At 14.4 kbps |
| --- | --- |
| A 3 MB song | 28 minutes |
| A 5 MB photo | 47 minutes |
| A 700 MB CD image | 4.6 days |
| A 4 GB film | 27 days |
| A 50 GB game | 337 days |

## What arrived in 1994

- Yahoo, as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web"
- Netscape, founded in April
- The first banner advertisement, on HotWired in October

## The thing people misremember

> The web was not organised by search in 1994. It was organised by directories — hand-curated lists of links — and by people emailing each other URLs. Search that worked did not arrive for years.

## Against the years around it

| Year | Hostnames | Typical speed | $/GB of storage | A 4 GB film took |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1993 | 130 | 14.4 kbps | $4,000 | 27 days |
| 1994 | 2,738 | 14.4 kbps | $1,500 | 27 days |
| 1995 | 23,500 | 28.8 kbps | $900 | 13 days |

Between 1994 and 2020 the typical connection went from 14.4 kbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 6,944, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $1,500 to $0.020 — a factor of 75,000. The 4 GB film that took 27 days takes 6 minutes.

## Common questions

### What was the internet like in 1994?

The first banner ad appears, and its click-through rate is 44 per cent. A typical home connection was 14.4 kbps, there were about 2,738 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $1,500.

### How long did it take to download a film in 1994?

A 4 GB film at 14.4 kbps would have taken about 27 days, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.

### How many websites were there in 1994?

About 2,738 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.

### What do people get wrong about 1994?

The web was not organised by search in 1994. It was organised by directories — hand-curated lists of links — and by people emailing each other URLs. Search that worked did not arrive for years.

## Related pages

- [The internet in 1993](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/1993/)
- [The internet in 1995](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/1995/)
- [Every year side by side](https://atoneplace.net/internet-in/)
- [Convert data units](https://atoneplace.net/convert/)

## Sources

- Web Server Survey — Netcraft (https://www.netcraft.com/blog/category/web-server-survey/)
- ICT Facts and Figures / World Telecommunication Indicators — International Telecommunication Union (https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/)
- Historical cost of computer memory and storage — Compiled from contemporaneous retail advertising and manufacturer price lists (/about/)