One of the more interesting things about web media vs print media is that web media's impressons are actually more documentable than print media's.<p>Hand a person a newspaper, and it's really quite iffy whether or not they caught or noticed a 1/8 page advertisement on page 23 in section C; give them a link to a readable source, however, and (as long as the text isn't too small) it's more or less guaranteed that they've received an actual impression from the advertiser. A documented and documentable impression, even. This becomes especially important as it takes place without the use or waste of paper. <p>I guess one of the major stumbling blocks is actual expense as it relates to documentation. I remember thinking about how Gmail works. For example, which would be more valuable: content itself or documentation about who has viewed a particular block of code with some content? The NY Times would say that the content/articles are more valuable, thus allowing its advertisers to gain exposure being in close proximity to them. But without the ability to be funded or paid by advertisers, their content becomes less "valuable" by definition. <p>And this is why I think open source will be the future. . . scaled efficiencies, not necessarily producer/consumer dynamics, create value.