"Marketers," writes John Battelle in Business 2.0"are in a slow, denial-laden shift from buying content-attached audiences, like those of TV shows, to buying intent-attached audiences, like those of search engines and personal video recorders." What he's saying is, it won't be long before the desktop computer has replaced the television set as the medium-of-choice for video commercials. The differences, he says, are that these commercials "will be measurable, trackable and targetable to the nth degree of demographics." Most important, "marketers will be able to target specific intent to buy -- and psychographics to boot." John cites a string of stats to support his case that web-based commercials will be in our faces sooner than we think. Broadband is now in "nearly 39 percent of all internet-connected households and is expected to be in 79 percent in five years ... corporate spending on broadband content-delivery services ...will almost triple by 2007 ... the vast majority (72 percent) of work connections are high-speed ... TiVo-like devices will be in 20 percent of American homes by 2007...And, finally, 99 percent of homes with incomes over $100,000 have 'net access, and it's a safe bet that most of those have broadband connections." Noting that "Msnbc, alone streams between 14 million and 25 million clips a month on average," he goes on to suggest that "video on the 'net is widely popular." Not only that, but Msnbc "has sold out its inventory of 15-second advertising spots, which run adjacent to many of the news clips it streams each month." He adds: "Advertisers that buy these spots are not buying shows; they're buying pure audience, as well as specific knowledge of that audience's intents." While many questions remain (such as whether surfers will accept television ads and if advertisers will figure out a way to buy it "that makes sense to them"), John asserts that such questions will be answered in the affirmative and that advertisers "will let go of their decades-long dependence on the up-front and learn to love the web." Source: Cool News