The fact that the Banner market advertising collapsed is beside the point. Little guys could never afford banner advertising in 1999, as Yahoo's minimum cost wa

The fact that the Banner market advertising collapsed is beside the point. Little guys could never afford banner advertising in 1999, as Yahoo's minimum cost was something like $10,000. Google offered something which little guys could afford, was more relevant to readers, and attracted higher clickthroughs, so Google's Adsense would have done very well even if it did compete with Doubleclick in 1999. To use a cliche, Adsense gets the "long tail" of advertising.