Pay to surf or Paid to Read is a business model that became popular in the late 1990s, prior to the dot-com crash. Essentially, a company uses income from advertising placed on members' screens to pay them for time spent surfing. A pay-to-surf company would provide a small program, commonly called a "viewbar", to be installed on a member's computer. Advertisers' banner ads were then displayed while the member was browsing the web. Since the viewbar tracked websites that the user visited, the pay-to-surf company was able to deliver targeted ads for their advertisers. Advertisers paid the pay-to-surf company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour of a member's surfing.