I worked for a company that made an ad with a 3d model of a 777 flying out of the browser it was so intrusive and bad it would nearly crash your machine.
How did they get away with this? A secret browser extension that was installed with AOL’s AIM. which even if you didn't install came with plenty of windows machines preinstalled. We had some 100k users because of this. Nearly everyone I knew had this junk installed.
Edit: this was in 2002 in the wake of the dotcom crash, I had been laid off from my previous job and couldn't find anything for 8 months. The company went bust a couple years later.
