E-Media, Direct Marketing, and the Internet

NCSA released the first version of Mosaic in April of 1993. In October of 1993, E-Media's founder Ken McCarthy addressed a meeting of direct marketing professionals hosted by Dan Kennedy and made the following predictions:

• Online marketing, long a low-profile speciality, is on the verge of a breakout of epic proportions,

• The Internet is going to become the dominant channel for online communications eclipsing computer bulletin boards (BBSs) and major online services, and

• If it sticks to its marketing plan, America Online will equal CompuServe and Prodigy in the number of subscribers (at the time, AOL had only 300,000 subscribers).

One of Ken's early articles on DM and the Internet published by DM News in August of 1994. Advertising pioneer David Oglivy found it to be a helpful introduction to the subject and wrote Ken to tell him so.