Well, let me tell you about advertising. Before some of today's push geniuses were born, I co-founded what is now one of Silicon Valley's biggest advertising agencies. My name is still on the door. That agency does many millions of dollars in annual billings, mostly in print. Some of it, I suppose, runs in Wired .
Advertising is a product of scarce access to large numbers of customers and prospects.
Since the Dawn of Advertising, The Media have been the sole providers of that access, and they've charged a lot for it. But when companies find ways to interact directly with customers and prospects, they will shoot resellers, distributors, retailers, advertising media and every other margin-demanding intermediary that stands in the way. In fact, the shooting has already started. The result is a new trend called disintermediation . It's a lot more scary than downsizing, because it starves whole companies and business categories, rather than just a few employees.