"In a way, it’s like the early days of search. Nobody ever thought it was quality advertising inventory — especially ad agencies — so it snuck up on people and before you knew it (less than five years!) Google was the most powerful advertising company in the world. Their display strategy looks and feels a lot like what they did in search to me — create a new paradigm value where people think there is nothing valuable at all and keep getting smarter at it until they are the most valuable piece of the pie. Then everyone has no choice but to partake. Keep in mind all their disparate data sources — Google Analytics, AdSense, Search, Maps/Local, Chrome, Gmail, Calendar, Android — that come into play. Let’s not forget the changes in Google’s privacy policy that now allows them to share and use that data across platforms. That’s a killer for pubs that has gotten very little attention."

Jonathan Mendez of Yieldbot, talking about The newsonomics of Google (Ad) Singularity » Nieman Journalism Lab (via taylordavidson)