t is easier to buy nuclear arms in the former Soviet Union than complete an online display buy. On the other hand, buying search clicks is like buying crack: easy to get into, but hard to stop.

If Internet publishing is exclusively advertising-supported, will truth be threatened by overbearing advertisers?

I've been working with a salesperson at a branded Web site over the past two months or so about an upcoming campaign. The process has been going OK, but the approvals for creative have been slow, so the launch date is a moving target. My client gave me a call, asking me about why I haven't included the site on the plan, after he got a visit from said branded Web site about how perfect their site is for our plan. I already knew that. I just needed to confirm the details. Why do sites feel it necessary to go …

Since the advent of contextual web-based advertisements, like Google's AdSense, online content has undergone a massive shift. Creating content solely for the purpose of hanging a targeted ad next to an article has proved a successful formula for making a quick buck. At its worst, some of this content is essentially spam, and its purveyors always risk raising the algorithmic ire of the search engines, which typically results in its speedy suppression from search results.

I have been working in the interactive advertising industry since April of 1999. And yet I feel strangely disconnected to the online advertising world I work in. I feel this way because I find the fundamentals ushered in by "the majority" influencing our industry's collective direction to be both misguided and short-sighted. I felt this way from day one. Our early leaders made monumental mistakes, and our current leaders continue to sweep these errors under the rug instead of cleaning them up.