The Net Loves Old Media

Print and TV get a windfall of ads from dot.coms desperate for attention

Perhaps the gerbils being shot out of a cannon or the pack of wolves attacking the high school band distracted him. Because no matter how often Marvin Goldsmith has chuckled at these offbeat TV commercials for Outpost.com an online computer seller, he's still not sure what the website does.

Goldsmith doesn't have to understand ads to profit from them. All he has to do, as president of sales and marketing at the ABC television network, is sell lots of 30-sec. slots. And now that dot.coms are caught up in a frenzied race to make their brands widely known outside...

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