Another contribution in the ongoing War Between Ad Nets and Online Publishers. I like Michael's history of media (and agree) and his example of the music business - but I think there are two points missing.
Point 1. No content = no publishers = no ad network. The ad networks are completely dependent on the existance of content sites that attract audiences. Interclick is a fine ad network but they only exist if their publishers do, which leads me to ...
Point 2. The problem publishers have is that the cost of content exceeds the margin left after the cost of direct sales plus the trickle provided by ad nets. They are wrongly focused outwards to ad nets, search engines and the NY Yankees. They should be looking inward about how to drive down their costs of quality content by employing prosumers (content creator/consumer combinations via umair haque) like www.brighthub.com.
Oh, and how in the world does he make the statement that total online inventory is fixed?
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