Less is more takes hold in advertising?

Today's Wall Street Journal has not one, but two articles on Google's minimalist text-only advertising business that garnered $3.2 billion in revenue last year. The one titled Automated Ads Serve Up Nonsense notes that the automated system is less precise than advertisers would like, serving up ads that offer "great deals" on lost dogs, sewage, and rot. The other Your Ad Here, 10 Words Max notes that even large businesses like Intel and Pitney Bowes are starting to uses Google advertising. We here at Blackfriars are fans of the whole Google advertising trend, simply because it makes companies boil their messages down to 100 characters or fewer. After all, what's there not to like about an advertising system that prohibits blah-blah copy like "simplified, standardized and integrated IT infrastructure that meets evolving business and operational requirements"?