Advertising and the internet

John Markoff and Nat Ives at the New York Times provide some interesting insights into web advertising programs like Google's AdWords and Yahoo's Overture:

"In the past, advertising has been hard to track and hard to make accountable," said [Google VP] Tim Armstrong ... Now, he said, advertising has become a dialogue with the consumer.

Individually focused Internet ads are already siphoning business away from locally oriented classified advertising and yellow pages directories.

"You're seeing advertising move into advertising that people can seek out, and moving away from mass advertising," said [UC Berkeley Adjunct Professor] Peter Sealey.

What is particularly remarkable about the success of AdWords is that it is all done with simple, unobtrusive, text-only ads. The ads are so well targeted that they become useful and informative. Rather than trying to grab your attention with flashy popups or graphics, these ads just try to be relevant and helpful.

See also "Bringing sense to web advertising".