There used to be 3 major TV channels to advertise on - now there are thousands. And there's Tivo, and other ways for people to block out advertisers. So TV advertising doesn't work the way it used to.

The same thing goes for Radio advertising. There used to be a few stations in every market that people listened to. Now there's radio, satellite radio like XM, and the mp3 player in your cellphone. So radio advertising has been diluted to a point where it does not produce the desired results.

As for newspapers, and magazines; everyone has heard that newspapers are having financial difficulties all over the country. And magazines are not being read as much as they used to. So why pay big dollars to advertise in media that does not have the readership that it used to? Your ad would only be seen once by a few people, and then used as a liner in the bottom of someones bird cage.

What about that tremendous annoyance, telephone marketing? Well, almost everyone has opted out of that already. Only businesses can still be terrorised with that type of audio-spam advertising.

Direct mail can still work for some business, but it costs a lot, and it usually must be done over and over.

Traditional advertising is just about dead. So what to do?

Most traditional marketing was outbound, interruptive, and the shotgun approach to finding new customers. People are tired of that, and have found ways to avoid it. The new methods of marketing are inbound. In other words we market to people who are looking for what we have to offer. Where's the best place to do that? You guessed it. On the Internet.

Think of how YOU find products and services you want. Do you wait for an outbound ad to find you? Are you one of the few who still use the yellow pages? Maybe you ask your friends for their recommendation (which is actually not a bad method of finding products and services). Or do you do what the rest of the country does millions of times each day? Just Google it...

Do you see what I'm getting at? I think you do. Outbound marketing is just about dead. Inbound marketing - like what you find on the Internet - is alive and well, and growing every day.