Why advertising is failing on the Internet

For a long time, I've felt somewhat alone in my opinion that advertising on the internet is a horrible business model for most websites. We even experimented with advertising for a month last April, and it was a horrible failure: members all but ignored the ads we ran in partnership with Intuit (the "most admired software company in America" according to Forbes). A survey we conducted before and after the experiment showed Intuit actually lost a smidgen of credibility with this community as a result. That settled it for us - no more advertising on Biznik, and we've instead focused on supporting this community via a subscription model (which I'm happy to report IS working).

Today on Techcrunch, Wharton professor Eric Clemons has published an extraordinary article, Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.

"Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites," he says.

His premise: "the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it, and all the king’s horses, all the king’s men, and all the creative talent of Madison Avenue cannot put it together again."

What do you think? What are viable alternatives to advertising?