This weekend, stuck in the land of dial-up, I paged through a print motorcycle magazine and compared the articles against the advertisments. All the ads were for gear, motorcycle shops, or vehicles to haul your motorcycles. Essentially, indistinguishable from the articles themselves. You can do the same with any reasonably niche dead tree publication.

The closer a publication moves to the right of the sketch above (going more niche) the more ads = information. The further to the left (going more general) the more ads are a distraction.

You’re already familiar with the Long Tail, so you already know this.

Elsewhere:

“Only 0.04% of those people who got the ads on their screens bothered to click on them. [Luke Mitchell] had expected at least 1% to respond.” -Catherine Holahan, BusinessWeek

“[Facebook is] advancing narcissism — which isn’t really making advertising any better — people will enhance their profiles to get better treatment from advertisers.” – Ester Dyson

“Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information.” – Dave Winer