The Deal, Revised
Below is the shape of every major ad format the internet has invented to get in front of your eyes: the banner, the thing dressed up as content, the one that interrupts you mid-thought, and the one that follows you around the screen like it's owed something. The shapes are real. What's supposed to go inside them isn't. Somewhere, an ad network briefly had this page's business, and we decided that wasn't actually the joke we wanted to be telling.
$0.00
required from you to be here
(still the one number on this page that isn't fake)
0
real ads currently running on this page
(down from 5. we checked what that took and took it back out.)
The Banner
The oldest trick on the internet. So thoroughly ignored by human eyes that advertisers now pay extra just to be here anyway. Not today, though.
The One Dressed As Content
You trust “content” more than you trust an ad, so the industry made the ad look like content. This one didn't even bother — it's a box that says it's sponsored, by nobody.
This unit intentionally left blank.
The Mid-Thought Interrupter
Normally placed directly inside a paragraph on purpose, because a thought you haven't finished is worth more than one you have. There's nothing here to interrupt you with, so — go on, finish it.
The thought remains uninterrupted.
…see? Nothing happened. That's the whole bit.
The Related Content Wall
Normally an infinite grid of things you might also like, which are themselves more ads, recommending more ads, forever. It would be, anyway, if there were anything in it.
Zero related content. Zero ads. All wall.