It wasn't long ago that it dawned on media experts that information technology - and in particular the Internet - would profoundly transform the business of advertising. Here was a new medium that could not only tell you when someone was looking at your ad but also indicate what that someone was interested in. How could old media's gray columns of classifieds compete with that?
Now it's dawning on me that advertising is in turn profoundly transforming IT. Google was the first company to really cash in on so-called targeted advertising. And thanks to Google's breathtaking revenue growth and market valuation, the rest of the IT industry - especially the venture capital machinery that creates new companies in Silicon Valley - now sees advertising as the key to "monetizing" IT innovations.
