Marketers were also able to own online customer data cocos islands keeling email list 150000 contact leads through eCRM software after the Internet was born. This led to the first clickable banner ad going live in 1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T, and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.[12][13] Early digital marketing efforts focused on simple HTML websites and the burgeoning practice of email marketing, which allowed for direct communication with consumers.

[14]In the 2000s, with increasing numbers of Internet users and the birth of the iPhone, customers began searching for products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company.[15] In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers still needed to register their own domain address.[16] These problems encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.