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.

If you have ever been to the dog track, you have witnessed a pack of lanky dogs rabidly chase a feeble metal rabbit. I can't help but wonder: How many of us are chasing the rabbit? How many of us are sitting in jobs without an end goal?

If media is a commodity, will salespeople be replaced with automated bidding and buying? I'm here to calm your nerves. Salespeople and publishers will still be needed and will thrive for the foreseeable future. But how can I be so sure?

Question from the mailbag: I sell ads for a blog network. We're fairly well known but there a re a lot of us out there, for sure. I call on agency and client media people. And when I say "I call," I mean I dial and the phone rings, but I don't get many connections. Email works, but a conversation would help too. Is it just me, or does everyone have problems with live phone conversations?

When you learn your site didn't make a buy and then report this news to your sales manager, your manager usually responds by asking, "Why?" Your sales manager must know you could not feel worse about not making the buy, but that going through this exercise of interpreting what went wrong doesn't make things better, right?

My latest MediaPost column attracted the ire of none other than Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). So incensed with my accusation that many publishers abuse consumer privacy, he resorted to ad hominem attacks, going so far as to accuse me of "conning my readers." Sadly, ignoring his bluster, Mr. Rothenberg is just doing his job.

Rationing has been made a dirty word in the healthcare debate. But appropriate and successful rationing has been in effect for years in the publishing world, only we haven't expressed it that way. Most of the commentary on the New York Times announcement about its so-called "metered service" set for launch in 2011 has been focused on the need to have readers pay for content online "like they do offline." Observers have all focused on whether "enough" readers will pay. But that's only half the story.