Nonetheless, despite resistance, over the late 1990s Pittman and Berlow managed to transform AOL's business model; from a standing start, they brought it to nearly $2 billion in annual advertising revenue (one third of AOL's total) by 2000. But if that revenue growth was staggering, it was carefully planned to seem that way, the result of an internal scheme named “Project Confidence” whose principal goal was to validate the theory that the real value of AOL lay in advertising potential. We have noted that the path of the attention merchants is risky, for it can call for compromises in quality and ethics. AOL, over a five-year period, would demonstrate that fact in a manner rarely equaled over such a short span.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 729