Silicon Valley prepares to take the revolution offline: The advertising industry "is facing a seismic shift," says Tim Armstrong, head of advertising at Google. "It's going from a human-scaled environment to a technology-scaled environment."
On a trip to the Valley this month, Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, said: "The way advertising gets bought and sold will be fundamentally different in the future than it is today." He conjured up the vision of a vast new electronic marketplace where buyers and sellers would meet, changing the way business is done: "Think of it like an Ebay for advertising."
Papers push on Web ads: Newspapers are frantically trying to map out a future online. And for many papers that future relies heavily on luring local advertisers from the printed page to the Web site.
But even on their own turf, as newspapers move online they face stiff competition from outsiders, like portals and search engines that are moving in on local markets.
