What's This Fascination With Ad Networks? (Or, the Online Media Business Will Be About Brands First, Technology Second)

Back a year ago, I wrote a three-part series on the future of the media business. It began as an attempt to think out loud about a topic with which I had become obsessed, and it ended up becoming a manifesto of sorts about conversational media and marketing.

As you may recall, I started that last set of posts with the observation that major media companies–Time Warner, News Corp., CBS–had all fired or parted ways with the longtime managers of their digital assets, opting instead for insiders or traditional media folks with whom they were more comfortable.

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