In fact, the Internet has turned out to be a huge new advertising frontier. Now a much more dangerous bit of conventional wisdom is on the loose. There's only one problem with this theory. It's directly at odds with what is actually happening. Rather than eliminate intermediaries, information systems do quite the opposite.
Information systems are powerful commercial tools because they lower transaction costs.
Lower transaction costs enable new kinds of transactions, which lead to new market niches and, overall, make the market environment more complex. In short, information systems create openings for new intermediaries to discover and occupy. Meanwhile, old intermediaries are disappearing, but that is only part of the picture. What seems to be disintermediation is really a mirage, one static piece of a larger process in which the introduction of new information systems perturbs market environments, creating slots for new intermediaries whose presence threatens older established intermediaries who either disappear or adapt to new market realities. Disinteremediation is not new.