[tsunamifury]

I think the more obvious and less 'revolutionary' way of stating his point is that ads that focused on awareness (i.e. i wasn't looking for information about this but you are telling me anyways) are dying in the face of ads that focus on conversion (i.e. I was looking for this and your ad helped me find it and buy it).

This isn't a radical change or even the end of advertising, its just more efficient.

[aweissman]

Agreed - i didnt say this was a revolution, perhaps I shoukd have instead stated this was evolutionary

[portentint]

Really well put. The author's right, but I'm sensing he feels this is revolutionary. It's not. It's been coming for a long, long time, as display gets moved more to the 'branding' column and paid discovery, paid search and other technologies get more and more love from marketers.