• by Michael Kubin , June 13, 2001

We've obtained a copy of the Web Sea Scrolls, recently found after being buried for a few years beneath Silicon Valley. This transcript records a conversation among the creators of Web advertising -- Joe, Barry, and Herbie (not to be confused with Moe, Larry, and Curly):

- ...more and more people are using the Internet. Let's reach all those people by turning it into a delivery system for advertising.

- What kind of advertising are you going to deliver? The screen is so small and besides, people are looking for content, not advertising.

- We'll just have to make the ads really teeny, so they can fit easily on the pages.

- But if the ads are teeny they'll be easily missed and hard to read, won't they?

- We'll work that out later.

- And how will they be priced?

- Sites will charge a fixed amount for every thousand people that see the ad.

- A fixed amount? How will sellers be able to maintain a fixed amount if there is an unlimited amount of advertising inventory? Won't that turn into an endless spiral of falling ad costs?

- We'll work that out later.

- Will there be standardized ad formats and technologies?

- Yes, eventually.

- But until there is standardization, won't there be tremendous confusion?

- Well, yes. But only for the first, oh, five to ten years. Then things should settle down.

- Will media planners have confidence in this new medium?

- We'll have to provide them with a large number of suppliers of audience data.

- A large number? Won't that lead to confusion and ambiguities?

- They'll work themselves out after a while.

- ...and will planners have the right planning tools with which to analyze and utilize the Web?

- Not right away, they're too expensive to develop.

- So what you're saying is that planners will be using ambiguous audience data and won't have any real planning tools at their disposal. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

- We'll just have to work that out later.

- And what about the agencies that create the Web ads? Who will work on the accounts?

- The newest, freshest, perkiest kids right out of school?

- Sounds like 'inexperienced' is more like it.

- They'll just have to learn on the clients' nickels.

- How can you expect advertisers to have confidence in this new medium?

- They won't have to have confidence in it. Most advertising will be sold based on some guaranteed level of performance, like the number of people seeing the ad or the number of people clicking on it.

- Sounds tempting. But what if this new medium attracts more sites than advertising dollars can support?

- Then there will be mass extinctions among the sites. But enough will survive to allow the industry to thrive. Eventually.

- How will magazines and newspapers feel about this new medium?

- They'll be antagonistic towards it, of course. They'll say it doesn't work. They'll overreact to a slowdown in growth, causing even more fear among potential Web advertisers.

- And how will the Web advertising industry react to that?

- I guess they'll just have to work it out.

- Michael Kubin is co-CEO of Evaliant, formerly Leading Web Advertisers, one of the web's most powerful sources for online ad data.