Ad model turns on its head as consumers decide what they want from advertisers

This month's issue of the Globe and Mail's  Report on Business magazine, out today, has a worthwhile story about advertising, called How Google Will Ruin Everything By Omar El Akkad. It explores what we can learn about the future of traditional advertising (basically, it has no future) in a world of search.

Advertising is one of the few industries where it’s virtually impossible to know if money spent is money well-spent. Is a Super Bowl commercial really worth $3 million? Is Tiffany & Co. a more alluring brand if its ad appears in The New York Times instead of USA Today? And what makes a good ad, anyway? These and other questions have plagued marketers for decades as they seek to refine the murky art of persuasion. Now, platoons of Google engineers are threatening to make such questions irrelevant by reframing the entire scenario: Let the consumers tell advertisers what they want.