• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 3, 2005

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has weighed in on one of the most pressing questions of online advertising -- whether the Internet is best viewed as a branding or a direct medium.

Carter, a participant in last week's Magazine Publishers of America event, "Laughing Matters: Magazines Celebrate Humor" -- a panel of top editors, hosted by Jon Stewart -- defended print ads by bashing online to an audience of about 1,000 magazine industry types.

Carter said that while he uses Google, he can't remember a single ad he's ever seen on the search engine. The crowd, while it didn't applaud this revelation, rumbled approvingly as it mulled Carter's comments.

At first glance, the observation seems true enough. Pay-per-click text links usually aren't particularly memorable. In fact, there's a good argument to be made that the best search ads are as unobtrusive as possible -- presenting just enough information to entice prospective shoppers to click, but not so much as to distract people from reading the information in the organic results.

But consider: Is clever marketing copy the key to branding?

Search marketing experts say no. Many say there's a branding value simply to being in the No. 1 position. In fact, they say, a spot at the top of the results page gives companies a lift. In other words, even if, like Graydon Carter, users don't recall the text of the ad, they might nonetheless remember the name of the company that placed it.