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wholly but in large part, as a result of the opportunities created online. Let’s look at this shift. Changes in the Roles and Meaning of Advertising Advertising is a staple of the promotional mixes used by brands to reach members of their target audiences (both for business-to-consumer products and for business-to-business products). Organizations rely upon strategically developed marketing mixes to ensure a strong value proposi- tion for customers, meaning that the organization can offer a product the customer wants, at a price the customer perceives as reasonable, delivered at the right place and the right time. The promotional arm of the marketing mix is tasked with ensuring customers understand the brand’s value proposition, recall the brand at the point-of-purchase, prefer the brand to competing brands (due to a perceived advantage, likability, image congru- ence, or a host of other persuasive factors), and know why they should buy the brand, where they can buy it, and what they can expect to pay. To accomplish these tasks, components of a brand’s promotion mix, of which advertising may be a part, communicate brand messages to the prospects in the target audience. This is, of course, a simplistic description of marketing and the role of promotion, but it serves to set the stage for the changed environment in which advertising now operates. Advertising is commonly defined as paid, one-way promotional communication in any mass media. The American Marketing Association defines advertising as ‘‘the placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.’’2 Advertising remains a primary component of a brand’s promo- tional mix, used to inform and/or persuade target audiences about prod- ucts. However, advertising, when conceived for an online environment and given contextual differences in its capabilities, functions, and the medium’s nuances, requires a new paradigm. The first flaw in the current advertising model is tied to the ‘‘mass media’’ component of the definition. The traditional forms of media, those that qualify under the umbrella of mass media, include television, magazines, newspaper, outdoor, and radio. The Internet is composed of an infinite number of niche sites and a relatively small number of sites such as Google and Yahoo! with truly mass reach. Advertising online might mean one-to-one advertising through permission-based, targeted 2 Advertising 2.0