It was the perfect sector to join, because no one had any real idea what they were doing. They had ideas that might become businesses and worked as fast as possible to throw things against a wall to see what stuck.

It was a wild ride, because almost every company was laying down the tracks, trying to keep ahead of the locomotive they built and were shoveling coal into. In other words, they knew they needed to build fast, but it didn’t mean they knew what they were building or exactly where they were going.

Online ad companies came about because companies and individuals had started to build sites. These sites started to attract enough eyeballs to sell ad space against. The sites — and especially the ad companies — were unlike any that came before it.

Silicon Valley had a history of technology innovation, but most of the prior inventions focused on physical computing or engineering systems. Programming, too, wasn’t new, but tying hardware and software together to create a web experience was. Making it all work required many things, but for any in this burgeoning world of online media monetization, it meant stockpiling two types of operators — the programmer and the sales guy.

It’s hard to think of two more different roles in a company. They are so different that they are often segregated in the work environment. Want inter-office tension? Just put the two groups together. One likes quiet, the other makes noise.

In so many ways, they are kindred spirits. Both thrive in chaos. Both tend to have desks in complete disarray and work to the beat of their own drummer. The physical and cultural similarities end there. They are fundamentally different jobs, and the personality types that enter each are more often than not the same two that didn’t ever have a reason to associate earlier in life.

In the office, it’s not as though there is any natural enmity, it’s more apprehension. Sales people are notorious for their impatience and screwing with product people’s roadmaps. The sales guy needs to eat, so any tweaks that can help him sell, he’s going to try and get implemented the only way he knows how – direct action.

In many ways the tables have turned. Sales people can still make among the best livings, but in the digital world especially, the prized asset comes in the form of the tech talent. A decade ago, tech talent was needed, but they played a supporting role to the business leadership. They were functionaries. Not so today. Product and tech tend to go hand in hand.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that some of the most valuable companies of the Internet age began at the hands (literally) of technologists not from the mind of a business operator. It’s a pattern that we have seen play out time and time again, even more so today where investors and, the ever increasing, in-profile incubators seek out smart product tech guys who have an idea and know enough to get it built themselves or with their partner.

Arguably the most fundamental paradigm shift that has occurred as a result of the Internet age has come from the unintended disruption of education and as a result roles. The world of technology is unlike any other. Doctors, lawyers, almost all professional services require years of formal training before they can strike out on their own. They generally don’t hit their prime until many in the tech world are looking to retire.

In the tech world, some of the best minds didn’t finish school while others never went to school. It’s a field full of self-taught people which in almost any other profession wouldn’t be possible. The new media world makes it possible, because it becomes the mental acuity of a classic profession with the craftsmanship of artisan efforts where a physical product says more than the education of the person who made it. Like fashion, a pedigree helps, but it counts for less than ever before. Building a viral app is better than any degree.

So where does that leave the oft neglected sales guy? In more demand than ever. The system has become so efficient at providing young, hungry technologists the chance to try their hand at building a product/business that there is a shortage of people who can turn their product into a money making reality.

Now more than ever we see posts for companies — from games to platforms –looking for their business cofounder/near-founder where the biggest requirement is strong business development skills. It’s *almost* cool to be great in sales. If you can build relationships, you now have the chance to take that ability and turn it into not just salary but equity.

The best validation of this comes from the fact that one of Google’s wealthiest employees happens to be their earliest and most senior sales executive. The trick, though, is offering more than just the ability to pick up the phone or even have a great rolodex.

Both are essential, but the sales 2.0 person has to be the voice of the business and founder. They need to not just make deals but do them in a way that is what the founders might do if they were an outward facing personality. It’s not easy, not initially lucrative, and not 9 to 5, but now especially some of the most rewarding opportunities exist for people that usually don’t get a lot of recognition in digital companies.

Cross-published at DM Confidential’s blog.

The overly dramatic analogy that came to mind at the time was the Titanic. Working at a struggling company feels like being on board a doomed ship. You watch it continue to do down with little ability to make it better. Even the best case scenario is just saving yourself and trying to minimize the brain damage, looking for that right point where you jump, not so high that you hurt yourself but not too low that you end up pulled under.

There is a difference though between a dip and destruction. Almost every major company faces set backs. In our offer driven ecosystem, our businesses resemble movie studios more than anything else, continuously looking for that next hit to propel the business forward. If they are really lucky, they grab hold of a Harry Potter and have years of future hits, or in today’s mobile world an Angry Birds that can iterate and expand to new platforms.

Every hits-driven company faces down times, with ours being no exception. It’s a different cycle, though, when the company is AOL or MySpace. They dominated their respective fields yet have faded into relative obscurity. For an executive charged with a turnaround, it’s almost a no-lose proposition. If you win, you really win. If you lose, there are a host of built in reasons why it couldn’t have worked. Sucking less is almost a victory. It is in this light that makes Yahoo an interesting study.

Only a small percentage of people reading will remember Yahoo in its earliest iterations, a simple directory, not a search engine, but a discovery engine. It was like a phone book, with a bunch of links in categories. But, that was more than anyone else had, and it was enough to create not just a business but to capture millions upon millions of web users who, like AOL before it, relied on the site as the place to begin their web experience.

It’s a great place to be, but it’s a fickle spot. Yahoo did a great job of embracing search through buying GoTo.com, but like so many who have a commanding lead of a hot market, they presumed that their share will only continue. That is how I would describe MySpace; at 50 million users it seemed incomprehensibly large. With Facebook approaching 1 billion members, we see how great but not resting on one’s laurels worthy it is.

Calling Yahoo a shadow of its former self doesn’t seem fully fair. It’s a shadow in terms of its former self in terms of buzz, brand and excitement. It’s a shadow of its former self in terms of morale and organization. But, it still has problems that need solving, improvements that need creating and quasi-stability, even if it has been languishing.

It has all of this, including the languishing, because it makes real money – more than $1 billion per quarter. It just hasn’t grown that number. Their quarterly revenues have actually shrunk over the past three years since its latest CEO took over. Asked why they missed their most recent numbers, she blamed the impact of changes in their sales leadership.

Digiday profiled “Yahoo’s Ad Sales Mess,” hearing from media buyers who said the company has “failed” and “essentially disappeared when it comes to staffing, attentiveness and the simple ability to handle significant dollar volume.”

The article quotes one buyer as saying, “They are not present,” and “If I had to get something big done, I literally wouldn’t know who to call right now.” Another says, “Yahoo has dropped off the map regarding senior attention as far as I can see. They still do a lot with the teams and maintain strong relationships with certain accounts, but I have asked multiple times to have a holding company-dedicated manager from their side to develop long-term strategic partnerships and I have gotten nothing from them.”

It’s probably over the top to say how the mighty have fallen, but Yahoo was the “gold standard” for media properties and their ability to generate ad sales dollars from brands.

It is probable that Yahoo has struggled because of management, but it’s more fun to think that what we see today is the result of not understanding the market…again. Display has changed, and it continues to change almost daily. Who is leading that innovation? Who has made acquisitions that show they understand not only where display is going but are willing to make some necessary bets?

Unfortunately for Yahoo, it’s Google…again. Display is a mess. It makes search look easy. Audience targeting at scale is part technology, part smoke and mirrors, but no part simple. Yahoo’s exchange is largely irrelevant, and chances are their most talented engineers don’t get to work on the next generation, but rather patching the old generation.

Sales always suffers when the product suffers. Yahoo has a product in terms of attracting a valuable audience, but they don’t have a product for proper monetization. It’s no wonder sales has issues. You need to believe in leadership and believe in the company’s ability to have something good to sell. Like tech talent, the best sales talent will leave as well when it just becomes too much of a grind to sell.

Why a writer? Look around. I’m riding on the 7:17 AM train from Cold Spring Harbor to Penn Station right now and, for the bulk of the 56 minute ride, 70% of the people on the train will be doing some writing — mostly pecking into their mobile devices. That’s a big change from 15 years ago. Back then, writing was something that happened in a more formal setting, when you sat in front of your workstation and crafted a memo, or wrote a proposal after a sales call. Back then, your prospects mostly communicated by phone — and would even answer it once in a while.

What does that mean for today’s online sales organization? A lot. First of all, your prospects are online… all day long. They are answering internal e-mails, reading newsletters, web browsing, checking their twitter feeds, and updating their Facebook status. They let phone calls go to voicemail and comb through their messages once or twice a day.

If you are in my business, your prospects are being assaulted by 30 e-mails a day from new start-up companies in the space, all promising to solve the problems of modern media, each with their own compelling value proposition. So, how do you break through all that noise and clutter, and get your prospect to acknowledge you?

Good writing.

Did you ever read an e-mail that made you laugh right off the bat, or had such a compelling subject line that you simply had to open it? How about an e-mail that felt like it was written exactly for you, or one that automatically answered a business question you’ve been asking for a while?

Those are the e-mails that get opened, read past the second line, and flagged in your inbox for later action…. the ones that break through all the noise and make a connection. They are hard to write, and finding the people that can write them is even harder. But in a world where the written word is truly king, those that can communicate the most effectively in writing will be the leaders.

For Randy Duax, a recruiter with Howard Sloan-Keller, the leading retained search firm in the media space, it’s all about knowing your audience.

“Writing allows for a connection between writer and reader and is a demonstration not just of intelligence, but empathy and understanding, as well,” he writes.”How many times has each of us read a cover letter or marketing email which, directed at a broad audience and without an understanding of our business objectives, we simply moved to the trash? Competent, targeted, and emotive writing is capable of cutting through our increasingly frenetic and multi-tasked lives, and really making someone stand out. Moreover, with everyone tied to a computer or iPhone (or Blackberry) 24/7, there’s little excuse for lack of communicative capability.”

Luckily, finding the best writers among your prospect list is fairly simple: look at their cover letters and judge them on the merits. Few candidates understand that, in sales, the easiest thing you can sell is yourself.

If you can’t make a compelling argument for your own employment as a salesperson (knowing the “product” as well as you do), then I don’t want you selling something of mine. The cover letter is your gateway to understanding the way a good candidate thinks and, more importantly, expresses himself in written form. Here are some things to look for:

Your Name: Did she get it right? Or are you “Whom it May Concern” or, worse yet, “Hiring Manager?” If your company has an “About Us” section, then your candidate should know who is in control of the hire, and address the cover letter appropriately. Even if you are not listed on the masthead, if your company has a phone number, then your candidate should be able to get the name and e-mail address of the hiring manager or HR person in charge of the hire. Would you let a salesman send a “To Whom it May Concern” e-mail to a prospect? Of course not.

The Knowledge: Does your candidate know the first thing about your company and its hiring needs? Does she spell the company’s name correctly (don’t laugh…this is not uncommon), and know what the company does? Does the cover letter reference the actual job title in the body of the e-mail? Hint: if you get a cover letter for a “Sales Director” position that talks about “the exciting Director of Business Development position,” then you’ve just been mail-merged. Would you allow a salesperson to send 20 strategically important prospects a canned cover letter like that? No, you wouldn’t.

Randy Duax, whose firm recruits for Pointroll, The Huffington Post and The Knot, expresses a similar sentiment: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve Googled a sentence or two from a cover letter a candidate sent me to find it was copied and pasted from a stock cover letter/resume website. If someone is going to put minimal effort into interfacing with me in such a fashion, how are they going to act when they’re actually in a sales role?”

What Can I Do For You? Too many cover letters focus on the needs and skills of the salesperson, rather than the needs of the company that is hiring. You don’t have to be trained in the Huthwaite methodology to know that the first rule of sales is to get to know the customers’ problems before you try and solve them. The candidate that leaps right into his pitch without demonstrating a knowledge of your needs is like a salesman who goes into a meeting and immediately leaps into a 30-slide Powerpoint.

Do you want a salesforce that “sprays and prays,” or a consultative seller that can break down the digital media ecosystem, and explain your company’s place in it, relative to the issues your prospects are facing? The latter, of course. If your candidate leads by putting your needs before his, that’s one sign of a seasoned seller.

The Close: Last, and never least, is the close. What is the “ask” your candidate is making? For an interview? Is the candidate’s “collateral” being left behind (her resume) compelling? Does the candidate reference anything besides her resume, or lead you to a place where you can find out more about her (an article or write paper she wrote, her LinkedIn page, or even an industry article you might be interested in)?

Being a good salesperson means always getting a yes, no or a continuation. Look at your candidate’s close, and see if it makes you want to take the next steps. If she can’t get to second base with you (an engaged “prospect” if there ever was one), then it’s likely that she can’t get there with one of your customers, either.

There are a lot of good salespeople out there, but few great ones. The great ones in the modern era are going to be the ones that can break through the clutter, and deliver the messages that your prospects want to read. They are the ones who not only communicate through e-mail the most powerfully, but the ones who write the Twitter messages that tend to get retweeted, and maintain a blog with their industry observations, and post the Facebook messages that don’t make you want to immediately “hide” them.

The best salespeople know what you want, and deliver the content that addresses that need. Finding them is as easy as being a great reader.

With 20 years in mobile and digital ad sales under his belt, Granath was most recently with athletics-based ad network Sportgenic as vice president of sales and business development, where he managed more than 750 properties. This was not his first stint in the world of sports advertising, as he helped launch ESPN’s online sales efforts and fronted the ESPN.com sales team.

In addition, Granath has led mobile ad initiatives at ESPN and was in charge of sales at Windwire, a pioneering mobile ad network. Also he was cofounder and vice president of account development for Ansible Mobile, a joint venture between Interpublic Group and Velti.

“Kevin has a proven track record of surpassing revenue goals and developing strategic positioning in extremely competitive market segments,” said Michael Chang, CEO for Greystripe. “With a trusted sales leader like Kevin at the helm, our network will continue to expand and exceed our goals during this period of explosive growth in mobile advertising.”

According to Paid Content, TMZ brought its ad sales in house this month, either an indictment of AOL’s struggling Platform-A infrastructure or how AOL sales teams sell ads. Paid content said the underlying problem might be that platform-A doesn’t fit well with custom ad units and site takeovers, something that has been the stable of other celeb sites. It also wonders if TMZ will spin off on its own

CEO Tim Armstrong has said he believes advertisers are not paying enough for content at AOL, and he wants t to change that. But this doesn’t help the perception. TMZ’s founding editor Alan Citron has said that AOL sales have three problems: too much inventory to sell; lean too much on Advertising.com; and sales people don’t sell the individual sites as brands enough.

Let’s see what new strategy Armstrong is expected to unveil to fix the place.

UPDATED: I asked AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett, who worked at AOL, his views on the portal’s future. His opinion was less bleak than I assumed it would be. (Here’s the url)

In backyards across America, barbecues and grills are fired up for the first time after the winter chill. For those in the BBQ business it makes sense to undertake Memorial Day Weekend advertising to drive sales of products. Ideally it should start early to mid May generating branding and consumer interest initially, then gearing up for increased activity to the few days prior to the Memorial Day Weekend.

When advertisers and advertising agencies are tasked with reaching mass audiences online like that, many undertake roadblock advertising because it’s an effective tactic for gaining user attention and engagement.
Add to this when run across an advertising network, roadblock advertising provides a wide reaching media buy with similar metrics to those of TV media buy.

For those that don’t know, roadblock advertising allows advertisers to own 100 percent of voice for a given period, usually a day. In other words, an advertising campaign would run exclusively across all the advertising units on a page reinforcing the advertising message. With road block advertising (sometimes referred to as sponsorship) all the available ad spaces are taken by the campaign. One can roadblock on every page or site the consumer visits within a network. Or you can limit the roadblock to an advertising unit such as an Island (MREC 300 x250).

Like all forms of advertising, roadblock advertising can be run with some or a number of other campaign targeting options such as day-part targeting and geo targeting ensuring that advertisers don’t waste any of their advertising budgets.
One of the strategies when undertaking roadblock advertising is to develop a campaign where each ad unit works in concert to deliver a unique and powerful rich media

advertising experience. As the ads are delivered concurrently, these coordinated ad placements can interact with each other in a myriad of ways. By creating engaging and attention catching campaigns like this, will reinforce the message.
Roadblock advertising campaigns are typically booked by date or even a week and given their exclusive ownership are typically priced higher than buying one or two media placements.

For instance, using a roadblock campaigns over the Memorial Day Weekend days can help drive sales.
Highly focused at men, some of the products ideal for promoting over the Memorial Day Weekend include;

• BBQs and Grills
• Charcoal / Wood
• Lighter fuel
• Grilling utensils and accessories
• Steaks / Seafood
• BBQ Sauce / Hot Sauce
• Marinates
• Beer and Spirits

Your Memorial Day Weekend Advertising doesn’t have to be just about barbecues and grilling, there is also significant opportunities to target women with outdoor related products such as outdoor settings, tablecloths, BBQ crockery as well as specific ingredients like salad products, dressings and mustard.

Lastly and essential to every backyard barbecue on Memorial Day Weekend is wine. This is a great opportunity for a wine brand to do heavy advertising activity at the start of the season to make their wine the must have for every BBQ. By positioning your white or red wine as the essential BBQ wine, it will immediately become the must have for each and every BBQ. Make an impression here at the beginning of summer and consumers will use your wine throughout the entire summer period ensuring multi-month sales.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

I was shopping for clothes for my wife at Old Navy, and when inquiring about a particular sweater, the sales associate told me that from her experience, that sweater was a little itchy. Though I didn’t end up purchasing that sweater (truth be told, I had already purchased a sweater in a similar color at another store earlier that day), I did appreciate that sales person’s honesty.

Question: Which store did I spend the most money at during my Manhattan shopping spree?
Answer: That Old Navy

I also made purchases at H&M, The Gap, Ann Taylor LOFT , Esprit and Banana Republic, but I purchased 30% more (dollar value) at that Old Navy. Now among these stores or during other shopping sprees in Manhattan, Old Navy is rarely my top destination, so these results were actually inconsistent with my personal shopping patterns.

As marketers, we always try to present our (or our clients) best features. How we increase ROI, add value, increase revenue, etc. And that’s what we’re paid to do as marketers.

But are our products really that perfect? Wouldn’t are customers be appreciative if we were a little more honest?

To get a better feel for what I’m talking about, read the Singles section of your favorite newspaper or website. I’ll wait while you read…

…OK. Don’t some of these people sound too good to be true? I mean, how could a successful, attractive, witty, well-to-do and funny 28 year-old actually be single? Now I’m not recommending that this person write that they’re 57, fat and ugly, but I think a little honesty will go a long way to meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, or towards making the sale.

Here’s why:

Honesty facilitates better management of expectations – When we over-promise in the pitch, we decrease our chances of making the sale because it will be harder to maintain the expectations we have set. Let’s face it, if that 28 year-old is less attractive than Natalie Portman, well, we’ll be disappointed.
Honesty enables creating an environment for trust – In the aforementioned single’s ad, I think most readers would appreciate a little self-depreciating humor, and respond favorably to it. In the Old Navy example, the sales associate created an environment of trust by telling me her truthful feelings about the sweater.
Honesty is, well… honest – My father used to tell me that people who do, don’t need to talk, and people who need to talk, need to do so because they don’t. Think about the really successful people you know. They don’t need to remind us of their accomplishments. It’s usually the less successful that need to talk up their accomplishments.

So as we head into a year that is going to be challenging at best, let’s resist the temptation to embellish and instead opt for the facts. Let’s try and not use terms like ‘best of breed’ (unless you’re marketing cattle), ‘revolutionary’, ‘evolutionary’ and ‘paradigm shift’.

Instead, let’s just try and give the honest facts, with a little humor thrown in for good measure. If you’re product is worth marketing, there will be something extraordinary in the ordinary facts.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

Most recently, Albano was vice president of Americas Operation for Progress Software where she supervised 200 people in the sales and marketing division, reorganized Progress’ customer service platform, built global accounts and met or exceeded all of her fiscal goals.

“Diane’s keen ability to understand the product, market and customer requirements and apply that knowledge to improve sales productivity and exceed goals, is a true testimony to her drive, industry expertise and dedication to customer success,” said Joseph Krivickas, president and chief operating officer for FAST. “With her executive experience and proven track record in building winning sales organizations, we are confident that FAST will continue to help its customers achieve their goals while driving significant market growth.”

FAST is the leading worldwide provider of enterprise search technologies and solutions.

Our industry is notorious for talking about ourselves endlessly. We make broad, sweeping statements about how our idea or our technology is the best thing since sliced bread and how our platform will “totally change the way consumers interact with media,” but that’s all pretty bogus. Our ideas and our companies may do a great job of providing new solutions, but not enough people truly sit and think about the challenges facing the audience they are speaking to first!

The best presentations are simple; they are the ones where you talk little, listen a lot and provide solutions aimed at meeting the challenges of the person you are talking to.

The only way to do that is to first find out what those challenges are and truly listen. I once sat in a presentation (true story) with someone who was pitching me about all the services he could provide me for media planning and buying which would help my clients achieve their needs online. I asked him if he knew what my team and I did and he said, “No. Why don’t you give me some background on your business?” I told him we were a media planning and buying shop and I asked him if he could find his way out by himself (really, this actually happened).

To be successful, you need to know your audience. Salespeople in our industry are usually so stressed for time and so busy trying to make new contacts that they forget the simple things about selling (and note that I am not criticizing them, because I understand why they are acting this way). The best salespeople are the ones who begin by asking, or have already done their research, about what challenges their potential clients will face and understanding the needs of that specific group.

If you are speaking to a venture capitalist, you need to know he is going to want to hear about how your idea will make him money. If you are speaking to a brand manager, you need to convey how your product or service will help her to achieve specific brand goals, such as increasing awareness or getting their brand further down the consideration cycle to purchase intent. If you are speaking to an Ad Agency, understand who their clients are and what they are trying to achieve. This research may not be easy, but it will close the sales cycle dramatically and help you sign more business at a quicker pace.

It really is this simple; to sell a presentation, speak to me about what I need, not what you do! Understand what my top ten challenges are. Hypothesize what the primary issues facing my business might be — and see if your guess was correct! Don’t provide me with a solution for a challenge that is #16 on a list of the top 20 challenges on my plate right now. If you can speak to me about what is top-of -mind and provide solutions that will work, you’ll get my business. If you don’t do your homework first, you risk the annoyance of your audience and the missed opportunity to build a lasting, strong and effective relationship!

Our interactive industry is growing, in spite of the missteps we’ve made over the years. But for us to compete with TV and other formats, and for us to continue to evolve to be the central discussion in media and campaign planning, we need to grow up. Salespeople need to be trained just as much as media people do. They need to be trained not just on the technology behind their products and services, but on sales and client management. They need to know to listen first and speak second (and this goes for media people pitching a new piece of business, too).

These people represent the front line of exposure for our business, so make us proud and step up to the plate to build our business the right way. And as for media people on the other end, be courteous, return calls and respond when salespeople ask questions. Reward the salespeople who do their jobs well, because these people will be your best friends for many years to come in your career.

Cory Treffiletti is President and Managing Partner for Catalyst SF and Founding Partner of The Arkitektive Group. He writes a blog on OnlineSpin.com

Compliments of OnlineSpin.com

We all know that the mess of humanity we used to call ‘the audience’ is rapidly splintering and the Internet has only sped the process. What hasn’t been grasped by many agencies and advertisers huge opportunities to be found down the middle and lower ends of the Long Tail.

One of the outcomes of this new economy is there will be far fewer huge blockbusters but far more success stories. Or as Anderson put it in the subtitle of his book, we’ll be selling less of more.

Video blogs like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenues working on shoestring budgets with audiences that the major networks wouldn’t even notice.

The combination of cheap bandwidth, low cost equipment and software that can do for a few dollars what it used to take thousands and enough creative people who feel liberated from the mass market economics of the previous century are making this all possible.

The mainstream media isn’t immune to this phenomenon. If you have children between the ages of 4 and 14 then you’ve probably spent long hours suffering repeat viewings of High School Musical. If you don’t have children in that age span, you probably have never heard of it. Yet despite this, High School Musical was the number one-selling CD and DVD last year.

In the age of big media, the number one CD would have been ubiquitous. The songs would have been on the radio around the clock. But the marketing minds at Disney knew their audience very well and targeted pre-teens where they are – on the Disney Channel and on Disney Radio and through the even more powerful pre-teen underground grapevine. By the time the High School Musical live show reaches your town, every pre-teen has had the songs and dance moves drilled into their heads not only by Disney but also by their peers. The rest of the audience is irrelevant.

There’s a lesson to be drawn here. It’s now taken as gospel that with the exception of large internationally known brands likes Budweiser and Coke, big event advertising (think the Super Bowl or Thursday night prime television) is no longer the ticket to brand awareness. But where do we go from there?

With the splintering of the once monolithic mass media into hundreds of cable channels, 12 and 24-screen movie theaters and millions of blogs, podcasts and video blogs, the audience has also splintered into millions of small communities who each in their own ways can find and support the kind of content they want.

Since bandwidth and the underlying technologies are so inexpensive, artists and creators no longer feel the pressure to justify their work in terms of the number of eyeballs who will see it. For most bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers, reaching a few people is enough and if costs have to be met it’s easy enough to find just enough advertisers or just put out a Paypal link.

For advertisers and marketers, it means you don’t have to worry anymore about reaching the largest audience possible since with the narrowcasting of the media and Internet, you can more easily find just the people who would be inclined to give you a look.

It’s important to understand we are in the post-blockbuster era. With hundreds of cable channels and infinite shelf space on the Internet, there’s no scarcity of content to fill it. Some of it might appeal to you, or your customers. And the rest might make no sense to you at all. But you can be sure there’s someone watching Ask A Ninja and if you are selling nunchuks, you better take notice.