This ad, from the 90s, ran in in local indie newspapers, Wired, Playboy and Rolling Stone. At the time, most users accessed the internet through either Compuserve and AOL which charged by the hour. IDT was one of the first companies to charge a fixed monthly fee; a few other companies followed and their ads boasted of "flat fees" which they touted alongside images of flat globes or heads, neither of which were very appealing and all of which assumed consumers knew the business term "flat fee." We took a fun, alternate approach, riffing on the idea of a seedy, by-the-hour motel.

The copy also let us poke fun at other cheap practices of our competitors.

Headline read: We Don't Have Hourly Rates (a second version simply said, no hourly rates)

$15.95 a month. That's all you'll ever pay. No hourly fees. No sign-up fees. No cancellation fees. Because at IDT we think all that's well...kind of sleazy.