weeks - 2:13 pm on May 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

I understand Yahoo's reasons and they make sense.

Still, this is sad. Yahoo has become more or less just like every other web site in trying to sell ads. And, I'm not certain that it's all Yahoo's management's fault. If Y has to cut deals such as this, how difficult is it for, say, newspaper web sites, to sell ads to national marketers? Tough sledding for everyone, in fact.

I think the message here is that success for a new web channel today is to target tighter on the audience, then tighter and tighter and then create a niche, all in mind with serving several firms who needs to reach that targeted niche. The waste of "mass media" ad buys is almost over. If anyone could have done it on the web, it would have been Yahoo.