Newspaper ads were way, way more profitable, though. Newspapers were the biggest game in town (everybody read newspapers), space was limited (you need to print

Newspaper ads were way, way more profitable, though. Newspapers were the biggest game in town (everybody read newspapers), space was limited (you need to print news, too), paper was limited (there are N pages in a newspaper), and so on. In other words, online advertising is sufficiently different in a bunch of fundamental ways such that I'm skeptical of this particular analogy. That's just my gut, though— I have no data. It would be worth seeing some analysis of how well demographic vs. targeted (?) ads worked. Then again, I'll bet you many folks who buy and display ads have already done the analysis, and that's precisely why this advertising exists.