Sunday, June 13, 2004

AdSense and the publishing revolution

The New York Times has a fantastic article on the impact of Google AdSense:
    The crucial point is that the blogger reaches those potential advertisers without having to hire a sales staff, prepare media kits or invest scarce time and money.

    Why does that matter? It completes the publishing revolution brought on by the Internet. The first stage was the liberation of the reader, who, thanks to browsers, could look at publications in any part of the world. Next was the liberation of would-be publishers. Thanks to blogging tools, anyone can present his or her views online. And now, thanks to automated ad sales, small publishers have a more viable hope of creating a business, and keeping independent voices, than they did even a year ago. A. J. Liebling's wisecrack that "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" takes on new meaning when technical and financial barriers to creating a Web-based press drop so low.
It's not discussed in this article, but it's also important to note that Google AdSense is probably the key to Google's future revenue growth.

1 comment:

Will said...

This is the first time I've seen someone say that Google's reaching the limits of relying on its reputation. Now, I'm heavily guilty of using the "it's Google" rationale and will carefully continue to do so, but I agree that Google hasn't exactly built itself on a bottom line that's rock solid, especially with the Overture lawsuit.