Don Marti

Sat 10 Dec 2005 12:01:09 AM PST

The mice that sang

(update 9 Dec 2005: Nicholas Carr writes, "The online ad market is going to become more efficient. Much of the profit that now goes to the operators of the ad-serving technology will be redistributed.")

(update 7 Nov 2005: it begins. I wouldn't sign up for AdSense yet; better deals are on the way.)

Two important things happened today (2 Nov 2005), media-decentralization-wise.

One. Microsoft is preparing a huge push into the market for online advertising. Can you say "Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all competing to offer your web site a good text ad deal"? I knew you could. Google is going to have to start passing more of the AdSense wealth on to the content sites.

Will the media company of the future be just Editorial, no ad department? Seriously, will the new generation of ad mongers not just replace media buying operations but also the ad sales departments of the media companies?

Two. That great "singing mice" story that got so much ink today is from a paper on PLOS Biology. Yay PLOS! And it isn't just about being the next Big-Name Media Scientist—open access matters for incoming scholarly citations, too.

Squeak!