That's the premise of this post from Eric Clemens - consider this:

The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date. It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair. It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to a captive audience, the way movies or traditional network television did. It provides the greatest array of entertainment and information, on any subject, with any degree of formality, on demand. And it is the best and the most trusted source of commercial product information on cost, selection, availability, and suitability, using community content, professional reviews and peer reviews.

I thought about that in the context of what I do every day. I post screencasts on how to work with our products, I post podcasts with long form conversations about Smalltalk, I post videos from events, and I post a lot of other content about the products. We use AdWords, but that's not traditional advertising - it will present information about our site to people searching for related information. That's very different from the broadcast model used by TV, radio, and lots of websites.

Put another way - how often do you click on ads you see on websites? When a search using your favorite search engine can find specific information for you from sources you trust, why do ever need an ad to get your attention? This is the huge shift that's coming at the entire market: TV, radio, and net. I've said before that advertising has been a pleasant fiction that we've all chosen to believe in; what Clemens is saying is that more and more people are noticing how few clothes the emperor is wearing...

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