1997 will be a "banner" year for

web advertising, while the

publishing industry will still

be in the shithouse. With

sold-out ad inventory and all

conceivable screen real estate

eaten up by Toyota plugs,

publishers will finally be

forced to wrangle with the real

weak link in their business

model: traffic. Simply put, any

website that can't afford

round-the-clock television

promotion won't have enough of

it. In search of the perfect,

ultra-cheap solution to their

numbers game, the vast sea of

medium-size sites will turn to

the even vaster morass of

microsites, offering

walking-around money to

diarists, eccentrics,

list-keepers, and one-hit

wonders in return for paid

linkage. By '98, we'll all be

six adlinks or less away from

almost anywhere.