Project Wonderful was an advertising service created by programmer and

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be ...

author

Ryan North Ryan North (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian writer and computer programmer. He is the creator and author of ''Dinosaur Comics'', and has written for the comic series of ''Adventure Time'' and Marvel Comics' '' The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl''. ...

in late 2006. Headquartered in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...

, Ontario, the service supported up thousands of webcomics and

blogs A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

with auctioned online advertisements, until it was shut down in 2018.

Concept and development

In early 2006, Ryan North was talking with a friend about how they severely disliked existing online advertisement services such as

Google ads Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...

and

AdSense Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These adver ...

, because advertisements on those platforms are priced based on user clicks or displays, and "the Internet isn't really designed to keep track of who clicked where, when, and who viewed what page when." Project Wonderful launched 8 months later. Rather than paying for clicks, Project Wonderful allowed websites to auction advertisement space. Advertisers were able to bid on a particular ad block on a particular website and, as long as their bid was the highest, they got to decide what is shown on it. Being invite-only, Project Wonderful initially only had a few dozen advertisers participating in the "perpetual auction" of ad space, though this number grew rapidly. Project Wonderful was built on

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software, coupled with

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

databases and an Apache front-end. The service was designed specifically for cartoonists, but in turn worked well for any independent website. Implementing new features into Project Wonderful took up most of North's time in the years following its initial release, together with his webcomic ''

Dinosaur Comics ''Dinosaur Comics'' is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on February 1, 2003, although there were earlier prototypes. ''Di ...

''.

Usage

Many webcomics, including ''

Awkward Zombie ''Awkward Zombie'' is an ongoing video game webcomic by Katie Tiedrich. Starting in 2006, the webcomic parodies the unusual aspects of video games in a comedic fashion. Initially gaining steam by parodying ''Super Smash Bros.'', ''Awkward Zombie' ...

'', ''

Loading Artist Loading may refer to: Biology * Carbohydrate loading, a strategy employed by endurance athletes to maximize the storage of glycogen in the muscles * Creatine loading, a phase of use of creatine supplements * Vocal loading, the stress inflicted on ...

'', ''

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ''Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal'' (''SMBC'') is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten pane ...

'', ''

Questionable Content ''Questionable Content'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''QC'') is a slice-of-life webcomic written and illustrated by Jeph Jacques. It was launched in August 2003 and reached its 4,500th comic in April 2021. The plot originally centered on Marten ...

'', '' Qwantz'',

MS Paint Adventures ''MS Paint Adventures'', abbreviated ''MSPAdventures'' or ''MSPA'', was a website and collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. According to some estimates, ''MS Paint Adventures'' was the largest collection of comics on ...

, ''

Sinfest ''Sinfest'' is a long-running American webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. Updating daily, ''Sinfest'' started as a black comedy strip in January 2000. It covers such topics as American politics, organized religion, and radical feminism. Overview It fo ...

'', and '' A Softer World'' used Project Wonderful as an advertising service. The service was used on platforms such as ComicSpace and Graphic Smash immediately after launch.

Shaenon Garrity Shaenon K. Garrity is a webcomic creator and science-fiction author best known for her webcomics '' Narbonic'' and ''Skin Horse''. She collaborated with various artists to write webcomics for the Modern Tales-family of webcomic subscription ser ...

worked on implementing Project Wonderful on the subscription service

Modern Tales Modern Tales was a webcomics subscription service active from 2002 to 2012. Joey Manley was the website's publisher and original editor. The site featured a roster of approximately 30 professional webcomic artists. Shaenon Garrity, one of the si ...

in 2007. At its peak, Project Wonderful had around 10,000 publishers, of which over 5,000 were webcomics, and about 10 times that many advertisers.

Shutdown

On June 11, 2018, Project Wonderful announced that it would be shutting down on August 1, 2018. North noted the rise of large social media platforms such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

keeping readers within their systems as a cause for the diminishing of the

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

. As fewer users visit dozens or hundreds of different websites a day, supporting independent websites with advertisements became more difficult.

References

External links

Project Wonderful
archived on the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and s ...

Comicad Network
Project Wonderful claimed successor for "Comics, Art & Games" niche {{Ryan North Advertising agencies of Canada Online advertising services and affiliate networks Internet properties established in 2006 Internet properties disestablished in 2018