One of the key drivers of the reemergence of both advertising and content on the Net is the development of new and powerful software, which, increasingly is harnessing the full power of the Net and the linkages it can provide. New software allows businesses to create synergy by imbedding their core competencies in each other's sites, vastly increasing the reach and profitability of a web brand, and firing up both the advertising and content sectors

Back in 1995, with the birth of the commercial Net, those web pioneers and brave entrepreneurs, who were the first to hit the beach, were able to enjoy a brief balmy period, where everything was sheer energy and the excitement of possibility on the Web. No one had any idea how we were all going to make money off this new medium but it was seriously cool and a lot of fun. There was a mentality of "Eureka, we can communicate with everyone on the globe", enthusiastic, amateur ham-radio-Bulletin Board-turned Web-enthusiast euphoria. A general feeling prevailed that the money would come as the Net population mushroomed, then exploded. Advertising and content was all we knew at the time, since no one had invented very sophisticated Net technology and actually buying product on the Net was still just a gleam in the eye of marketers. Most of us figured that advertising and content would somehow do the trick and, at least, make a living for all the euphoric Webbies out there.

Looking back at that attitude, from a couple of years out, it seemed naive, perhaps even a little stupid to think advertising and content could support a website. After all, only about 10% of websites got any advertising at all and the bulk of the money was spent on the 10 top sites like Yahoo. The rest seemed stuck on the down escalater trying to go up with no viable business model in sight. Folks like Dell came in and blew us out of the water with ecommerce, reaching new record sales of computers each month. Folks like Time - Warner, CNN, Hearst, and News Corp came in and cast their huge shadow across the Net, the giants scaring the pygmies to death. In the beginning, the small sites who first entered the Web and loved it, who were pioneers and creators and innovative types, were happy just to be on the Net and hoping to make a living. Perhaps that was lucky, as expectations were not Gargantuan and neither were budgets. We skimped, we made do. We'd never heard of, nor could we conceive of, spending $30 million on your ad budget alone.

The next phase, when the giant corporations got on the Net, was certainly the end of throwing up a dot com and simultaneously having a lot of fun. Serious money and serious competition, not to mention truly awesome stakes, inevitably call for serious concentration:the attention level of an Indian firewalker and the concentration of a Tibetan monk. In other words, the Net came to be about serious business.

Fast forward to April 2000. You can almost hear the sound of dot coms crashing and Internet whiz kids, instant zillionaires, falling from the sky, whooshing past your shoulder, on their way down to the earth. Was this a bad thing? Not any worse than the dinosaurs emerging from the swamps, gorillas starting to walk instead of swing from tree branches, or the horse and buggy giving way to the car: it was evolution, man. And evolution is always, in the end, good, because it is part of the process of the survival of the fittest.

So suddenly, even though there was a whimpering, off stage, of dot coms running out of money and shuttering their doors, the noise level had been brought down. It was not silent on the Net but, at least, quiet enough for those who had slowly built their markets and edged towards profitability to be heard. It was the revenge, not of the Nerds, but the pioneers, those who had come, not to make a quick buck and IPO, but because they loved the Net and its possibilities. Their sites were their passion, and one by one, others had come to feel passionate about these sites, whether they were about the joys of fly fishing, or leveling the playing field for women. And, as the world turned on its head, it seemed they hadn't been so foolish after all, because advertising and content were back with a vengeance, in a slightly different form, having evolved themselves along the way.

Internet advertising revenues approached the $2 billion level -- almost double the first quarter levels of a year ago -- as traditional advertisers moved increasingly on to the new medium. Less than one year after Internet ad revenues topped $1 billion, they hit $1.95 billion in the January-March period of this year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

According to figures from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, spending on Internet ads in the period were up 9.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 1999 and 182 percent from the first quarter of last year. Rich LeFurgy, chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau notes "The continued and growing numbers of large traditional advertisers expanding their budgets for Internet campaigns are really the news here." A report by Veronis Suhler also notes that "Internet advertising surged 140 percent to $4.6 billion in 1999 and will increase at a 39 percent compound annual growth rate over the next four years. The latest spending trend, if maintained, coincides with a recent forecast that Internet advertising will grow more than fourfold to $24.4 billion by 2004, surpassing both network and cable television as well as consumer magazines."

So advertising is definitely back on the fast track. Whether or not venture capitalists will accept it as a sustainable business model, is a moot point. At the very least, advertising revenue can sustain a web site while it continues to develop an audience and shape a core competency which will have some value which, ultimately, can be monetized.

That other much maligned critter, content, has also made a remarkable come-back. The B2B, business to business, commerce sites have found they need content to attract consumers, no matter now valuable the transactions they offer. After all, you may not need to make a transaction every day and when was the last time you wanted to read about dust mops or office supplies? One exception may be computers and technology -- ask Michael Dell, who has transformed Austin and an entire industry with his success-- but that's a market for Net geeks for whom technology is content. For others, content married to commerce is emerging as a winner.

One of the key drivers of the reemergence of both advertising and content on the Net is the development of new and powerful software, which, increasingly is harnessing the full power of the Net and the linkages it can provide. New software allows businesses to create synergy by imbedding their core competencies in each other's sites, vastly increasing the reach and profitability of a web brand, and firing up both the advertising and content sectors:

• Reach of Advertising for Web Sites Software, and new business models, allow top websites to exchange their own banner ads with each other on a fully automated basis, utilizing all their remnant advertising inventory, increasing their reach and exposure, with no additional operating burden. The squeeze on dot com profits has actually encouraged big name players like DoubleClick to develop new uses for their ad serving technology with a positive result for both the websites and the audience, which now has an opportunity to learn about some of the smaller players on the web, who haven't had the big budgets to burn on advertising.
• Syndicated Advertising/Ecommerce Integration into Content Web Sites Again, new software and business models allow a seamless match up between commerce sites and content sites. Not only do B2B sites seek content, but through syndication, which lowers the cost and increases the volume, etail ( electronic retail or B2C, business to consumer) sites may stage a come-back, also. Leveraging volume, an ecommerce syndicate can utilize unsold inventory, or white space, to integrate retailers' stores into popular content web sites, allowing visitors to purchase from these stores without having to link away to a retailer's site. This allows a content web site to effortlessly add value, retain its hard earned visitors, and receive a commission check for all sales each month. A fly fishing site, for example, might imbed a sports' outdoor gear, ecommerce store into its site. One of the great advances here has been the increased ability to actually complete secure transactions online.
• Explosion of Content Platforms Suddenly, the Net has gone from a profusion of content sites, some of them niche markets competing for eyeballs with the giants, to a more mature model, where the giants want to reap value from the niche sites and incorporate their expertise into a web site which can monetize those eyeballs. For example, a giant sports retailer, might want to incorporate the content from a small fly fishing site, to attract that demographic, and share any revenue produced with the fly fishing website. It's a fair exchange. Multiply that by the number of individual, special interest sites and you come up with a large commercial site which has depth, and small niche sites which now have the capability to produce a revenue stream off their expertise.

  Software and new business models now allow content sites to monetize their content through business exchanges, as described, by broadcasting through their own platform, or by offering individual pieces for sale in a completely automated environment. Ultimately, at least one Net guru, Joe Firmage, writing in Business 2.O, in "The New Math", says : "Contrary to early predictions by some experts in this fields, I believe that content, in all its rapidly diversifying forms, will be that most profitable kind of asset in the Internet Economy". He points out that content is very scalable, there is great leverage in deploying it, thereby allowing the possibility of the most robust operating profits.

The lesson here seems clear. If you are producing something of value, don't be discouraged by the prevailing trends. Perservere. And don't bury the body before you're absolutely sure it's not going to revive itself, surge to life and kick the tar out of last month's new, new business model de jour.