“Since its inception a few years ago, the mavens of Net marketing have promised the world to online consumers: ‘one-to-one’ relationships and offers tailored to your every taste or preference; pop-up ads, ‘interstitial’ ads, and banner ads of every stripe tailored to your data profile; emails crammed with ads themselves; and so on. And they screamed loud enough — on television ads and billboards around the country — for everyone to hear. Truth is, the multimillion-dollar dot-com marketing budgets still haven’t delivered much bang for their buck, and Wall Street and consumers are losing patience. Here’s a look at what’s working, what’s not, and the people behind the scenes of online marketing who are driving change.”

“The other day, a writer interviewing me for another online publication asked me a very interesting question: ‘Why is ClickZ profitable while Salon.com is not?’”