With many magazines so fat with ads these days that dropping one on your foot might break a toe, it may be hard to imagine that there was a time when periodicals didn’t carry ads. But for years after the Civil War, advertising was done primarily through trade cards, not magazines. The trade cards, which had images on one side and copy on the other, were handed out by delivery men. Besides, editors at many magazines worried that ads might unduly sway the unwary reader, so they eschewed what they saw as hucksterism. Harper’s repeatedly turned down advertisers until the late 1880s. Reader’s Digest remained ad-free until 1955.

The scary part is that our opinionated conversationalists are even less optimistic about advertising online. They see almost no future for Web-based ads.

JERRY DELLA FEMINA: I don’t know any advertising agency that has mastered the Internet yet. Being able to understand it and sell products on it through advertising seem almost impossible. Banner ads are close to meaningless because the average consumer is online mainly to search for information. As you try to find something, imagine that every once in a while somebody jumps up and shouts the name of a product. You resent it, and then you don’t pay attention.

A few months ago, I was online looking up the year 1968 for an article I was writing, and I was stalked by Amazon.com. Every time I typed in 1968, Amazon offered me the best music of 1968 and books from 1968. I did not appreciate it.

Customers resent ads on the Internet the way they resent advertising in movie theaters. People grew up believing that when they went to a movie and paid admission, they wouldn’t have someone coming in and selling them a product. They didn’t mind if they were told to go to the stand for a Coca-Cola. But people would boo and hiss at other ads.

SERGIO ZYMAN: I agree that banner ads are a joke—even if lots of guys got away with making plenty of money by selling them. I am desperately looking for that one agency out there that has figured out a way to use the Web to sell more stuff for traditional companies.

There is one area that will work online: content-driven advertising. If you go to the Elle magazine site and you advertise facial creams, I think you have a pretty good chance of getting a solid response. The problem is that that may be the only type of advertising that will work online.

Because almost all ads simply don’t work, the business model that has companies on the Internet relying on advertising revenue is not viable. I’m either an adviser to or an owner of more than 40 companies on the Web. When people came to me for help with dot-com businesses, starting a couple of years ago, I asked, "How are you going to make money?" The moment that they mentioned advertising, I said, "Pass." I told them, "I don’t know how you’re going to make money."

DELLA FEMINA: A number of people came through my office looking for help on some of the worst ideas I had ever heard. They were all advertising-based. I hate to walk away from business, but I also don’t like taking business that I know is never going to make it. So, invariably I would say to these people, "I don’t think that I’m the right person for you because I don’t know if this idea is going to do that well given that you are depending so much on advertising dollars." They would look at me and say, "We’ve already raised $12 million." This was during the dot-com boom. Those companies are no longer around.

Anyone who thinks they are going to get ahead by generating ad revenue or by buying ads on the Internet is wrong. I have never been in a meeting where my media person [who helps clients decide where to place ads] got up and said, "We’re going to advertise on the Internet." If he did that, I would replace him.

We’re going to have to be clever and figure out different ways to reach people. But we’re not going to reach them through advertising on the Internet.

ZYMAN: Part of what is going on is that the Internet is educating the public, increasing the level of knowledge and awareness of things. When customers become more knowledgeable, they get more skeptical about advertising.

At the same time, products are becoming less distinctive. All detergents are basically the same. All toothpaste is the same. If somebody makes a small improvement, it takes no time at all for competitors to do the same thing. It becomes hard to differentiate one thing from the next.

The trick is to find ways of creating content that can actually communicate the benefits of a brand to consumers. The answer isn’t going to be a lot of commercials. We have to devise new methods to connect with customers, to give people information about why they should buy one product vs. another. That will require both traditional media and the Internet.

DELLA FEMINA: It will be very tough for advertising to continue in its current form. It’s going to have to change.

On the Internet the consumer seeks out information rather than have a company surprise him with it, through an ad. If people are interested, they’ll use the Internet to actively find out about anything they want to buy.

ZYMAN: In many ways, the switch you describe implies a new form of advertising. You’re not necessarily going to have to have a commercial that explains all the major features of a car, for example, as many do now.

There has been all sorts of talk about the demise of the business-to-consumer market, especially online. The death occurred because B2C turned into C2B. The consumer said, "Companies are telling me that all products are the same and that I should buy just based on price. They’re doing a lousy job of marketing to me. So, I’m going to take over." The consumer is now in charge.

DELLA FEMINA: The consumer does have more power. In addition, there is essentially a whole new type of customer, when you consider young people and the relationship they have with the Internet. I have two small children who don’t even watch television. They live on the Web. They are totally different than we were.

My 14-year-old daughter overheard my wife and me discussing getting a third car. I kept saying, "I’m not going to spend a lot of money for a car that’s going to be used only on weekends." We visited a lot of used-car dealers but eventually gave up. My daughter went on eBay and, without telling us, bought a car.

She ran in to her mother and said, "I’m in trouble, Mom. I bid on this car for $15,000." In the end, I spoke to the seller in Boston, and he told me, "I’ve been negotiating with your wife." I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was my daughter. We bought the car, a Range Rover, and I must say it’s the best car I’ve ever owned. It was exactly what I was looking for.

My daughter was very comfortable using this untraditional channel to buy a car. That’s a type of consumer that corporations and companies have to reckon with now.

ZYMAN: Another thing to keep in mind is that, even though people say brand awareness is so important, it really isn’t. You have to get the meaning of your brand in front of consumers, not just the name. Your daughter wouldn’t have bought the Range Rover if she didn’t know all the dimensions of its brand—Range Rovers’ safety, their durability, their status. That information has to be delivered to people through every possible avenue.

As a result, as time passes, there will be more multi-message ad campaigns, similar to the "Always" campaign at Coca-Cola (which was created before I came back to the company). Some consumers are going to buy a Range Rover for its safety, others for its status. You have to construct ad campaigns that allow for the different purchase motivations.

DELLA FEMINA: The relationship between clients and agencies is changing, too, and has been for many years. The agency is becoming weaker. Where it used to be a strategic partner with clients, it is now merely a supplier. Before, the advertising agency got to deal with the chief executive officer. Now, the ad people won’t even see him at the corporate Christmas party.

ZYMAN: I think it is because advertising has been demystified in many ways.

DELLA FEMINA: I agree. The advertising man was romantic. We saw movies like The Hucksters, and we thought the ad executive did a particular brand of magic.

ZYMAN: People started saying, "What do I get for my ad? Show me some results. Show me some numbers." Agencies started trying to get around that by becoming full-service, and when they did that, they abandoned their strength. Today, with few exceptions, agencies are much more purveyors of services than strategic partners.

DELLA FEMINA: The other thing that happened with advertising started with the death of David Ogilvy. He was the last advertising person whose obituary would appear on the front page of the New York Times. Advertising used to be a star system, like Hollywood. Agencies were named after the giants: Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves, Ted Bates.

ZYMAN: Jerry, you were one of those, too. When you had your first agency, you were what clients were buying. They were buying a point of view driven by the head of the agency.

DELLA FEMINA: At that time, people did buy the name and the magic they thought the name would bring. Now, it’s easy to say that the ad people—who are a faceless group—can be replaced.

ZYMAN: What we need is for the ad agency business to reinvent itself. Corporations need agencies now more than ever, but they need real agencies that are committed to interpreting a brand for the consumer instead of just doing great ads.

The consumer is confused, because it’s so easy for a company to get into a market and copy the attributes of other products. "Me, too" is the No. 1 market strategy today. Ad agencies need to help companies communicate the real benefits of their products.

DELLA FEMINA: I’m writing an article about how companies treat customers differently now than they did before. Basically, the consumer was a mystery to companies until the late ’50s or early ’60s, when they started to do research.

The closer companies came to understanding the consumer, the less they respected the consumer. They went from thinking the consumer was king to thinking the Wall Street analyst can be king. The math is that a half million unhappy consumers do not add up to one unhappy Wall Street analyst.

ZYMAN: That’s because sometimes consumers can get manipulated. They can get sucked in and fooled by all the hype. Look at all the people watching Survivor and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Look at NBC, which couldn’t explain to people why they should be sitting glued to the television during the Olympics, and it should have.

Things were simpler when fewer messages were aimed at consumers. The industry could do almost anything. It could throw a bunch of kids on top of a hill and have them sing, "I’d like to teach the world to sing" even though the ad never sold any product. It could have Mean Joe Greene toss a T-shirt to a kid.

The problem is that, at some point, the advertising industry fell in love with mega-productions. It forgot it had to give consumers the reasons to buy.

DELLA FEMINA: I once had a client, Garrity Lighter. I told Garrity that he should do public relations rather than advertising so that people would get to know him and the product. He told me that everyone he knew knew him. That’s the reason his business stayed small.

Right now, we’re seeing advertising and public relations merge, and we’re entering the golden age of public relations. Call up people at a PR agency and tell them you have an account for them. They’ll tell you that they’ll see you in three or four weeks. They are just too busy.

Companies are finding that if they can place a story in a magazine or a piece on television or even on the Internet, customers are more apt to read it and see it as the truth. So the industry is moving more toward truth-based communication. Companies are trying to talk to people without the direct sell.

ZYMAN: I also think that the advertising business has spent way too much time trying to defend old models as opposed to creating new ones. The opportunity is there. Companies need to scale. With the technology, such as the Internet, that is available, they’re going to grow bigger by building more powerful brands. Scaling with bricks and mortar is too expensive.

Della Femina can be reached at jerry@dfjp.com. Zyman can be reached at szyman@zmarketing.com.