The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has just released a seven-minute movie called “I Am the Long Tail”. Here’s an excerpt of their description:
Analysts estimate there are as many as 1.2 million Web sites that support themselves by selling advertising, through their own sales forces or ad networks. Most of them constitute the vaunted “long tail” — small sites serving the refined interests of niche audiences, whose existence is premised on the Internet’s near-barrierless opportunity to create and distribute content. But the term “long tail,” based as it is on such abstruse mathematical concepts as Pareto’s law, can seem bloodless. It hardly does justice to the countless lives made better because of the ad-supported Internet.
via The Long Tail by Chris Anderson on 3/23/09