There were (and still are) sites hawking anything popular - games, porn, desktop apps, etc. If someone was lucky, they ended up with a bunch of adware slowing their computer down. Worse scenarios involved things like programs which would surreptitiously hang up your dialup connection and redial the equivalent of a 900 number in some country where the scammer could pay off the local police.

Search for something like "flash update" on non-Google/DDG search engines and look at the top ads if you want the general feel.