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"Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change."
Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

12/29/2005 Entry: "Is another crash coming?"

I'm with Steve Rubel on this one. The internet display advertising pie simply isn't big enough to support all the new so-called Web 2.0 businesses that are springing up.

Unfortunately, the reality is that for all of the hype this year around online advertising, it is not growing as quickly as the Web 2.0 market hopes...

This spells trouble for startups hoping to capitalize on online advertising. There won't be enough to go around...

VC investments in unproven ad-supported ventures next year I bet will slow and we'll discover the Long Tail -- at least as far as online advertising is concerned - is not growing as fast as we would like.

As a guy who lived through the first crash with a business model that was ad-supported, I think Steve is right on the money here. Online display advertising will never, I think, live up to what publishers would like, because the web isn't a mass media entity. That's not to say that online advertising as a whole won't produce BIG numbers, but we're going to have to look beyond conventionality for that. Online direct marketing is projected to grow at a staggering rate. Paid search is growing, too. And there are new models yet to be discovered.

Good stuff, Steve.


"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."
Leonard Sweet