David Lee, senior sales executive at AOL UK, thought his new job
would plunge him straight into the weird and wonderful world of online
advertising. As it turned out, the transition occurred rather more
gradually.
’I had worked on Stuff and Maxim at Dennis Publishing, so I was used to
selling on magazines,’ Lee recalls. ’I joined the online service
CompuServe when AOL had just bought it.
’Under the previous owner it hadn’t taken any ads so, when AOL opened it
up to advertisers for the first time, there was a landslide of
interest.
Consequently, we were booked solid. So instead of selling online, I was
asked to sell some space on CompuServe’s members’ magazine, Go.
’The very first sale I made at AOL was actually a full page in their
mag, which I sold to an internet company.
’While I was pleased with the sale, I wasn’t exactly thrown straight
into the deep end, as far as online sales were concerned.’
