Doug Weaver, coming up soon as a guest on the DishyMix podcast is guest blogging today about IBM’s “End of Advertising as we Know It” prediction.

Per Doug: It was interesting on a couple of levels. There was a kind of anachronistic ‘travelogue’ feel to the whole thing: as though the Big Blue team was discovering the ad business for the first time. It was intriguing to hear someone not rooted in the digital space describe all these changes from the outside, tranlsating it for the common business person. Of all their prediction-scenarios, the one I find most likely is the Open Exchange model.

The web is really good at disintermediating unnecessary people in the buy/sell process for commodities and cost/availability services. If it works for tickets and books, why not for impressions and GRPs? There’s nothing so magic about the buying of a garden variety ad. I’ve written on this topic as well (”The Oreo Doctrine“) and challenged ad sellers and buyers to redefine their real work as something more akin to consulting.

Where I think the IBM report goes off the rails is in its assertions about reengineered consumer behavior. I think the idea that consumers are going to become active participants in the selection of the ads they see is just off base. Most consumers get the fact that advertising is going to fund what they’re getting for free or for a greatly reduced cost, and they’re OK with that. We’ll accomplish a lot more by simply letting that compact stand and then using the powerful observations we make about the consumers behavior to pour more and more value into the ads themselves.

– Doug Weaver is founder & CEO of Upstream Group, a consulting and training company to Internet advertising, marketing and commerce-related businesses. Internet leaders like Yahoo!, CBS Interactive, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Online and
the Tribune Interactive, look to Upstream for timely consulting, focused training and quality networking and learning opportunities.