Things are grim in Ad-banner Land where the likes of Yahoo have tried to make their money. But Web banner ads are demonstrably ineffective. Content sites serve up news, sports, or specialty content for vertical markets. Or they are simply aggregators of content, or portals like Yahoo. Since all this content is free to the end user, the main source of income has to be advertising.
Porn continues to be the real Internet success story.
Any advertising professional will tell you that sex sells. Of course it was pure madness on Yahoo's part, and the public response was swift and brutal. A week after the news broke, Yahoo reversed its decision and joined New Coke in the annals of marketing blunders. But Yahoo and hundreds of other content site operators still face the ugly reality that banner advertising alone cannot and will not pay the bills. Banner ads have from the start suffered a fatal flaw.