This also goes for the fate of online marketing. There's life in the old mule yet, as I've been witnessing at trade shows I've attended over the past few months.

A few weeks ago I went to @d:tech here in NYC. It was a smaller show held in a smaller space this year. This made me think of David Ogilvy's astute suggestion that it is better to have an event in a space too small rather than one too big. Last year it was in the Javits Center, where all the energy was dissipated, (not to mention that it took place shortly after 9/11).

Yes, there were fewer booths on the show floor, though it felt like more were there because they were in that smaller space. Focus was the order of the day. The people manning the booths were looking happy with the quality of leads they were getting from passersby.

The passersby I talked to seemed as if they were on a mission, looking for something. This is in marked contrast to years past, where I found myself asking at many trade shows, "...and the nature of your business is?" Often enough, I couldn't get a straight answer because they were all fueled up on IPO money or VC bucks.

Well, the VC bucks have cycled out, and the IPO money has evaporated. You either make money, or you don't. Sort of reminds me of why businesses exist in the first place, which is probably why both the sell-side and buy-side at these shows "got game" and focus. In short, they're real.

I'm told the DMA annual show held earlier this fall in San Francisco was well attended, and there was cautious optimism for the first time in a long while. The ClickZ Email shows last spring in NYC, (and more recently in CA), were well focused as well.

"Holy Browser, Batman!" the Internet is going to stay around as a marketing medium! I never doubted it. Why? Just look at mindshare. How much time do you spend on the Net? How much time does everyone you know spend on the Net? Looking at a light source (ie., your monitor) is no fun unless there's enlightened self-interest in it. Therefore, the only challenge then is to figure out how to make the Internet pay, since the eyeballs are already glued to it.

Judging by these trade shows, the two big answers are Email Marketing and Search Engine Marketing. Will those sub-categories change and evolve quickly? Of course. Are there other categories to exploit? Sure. But the obvious money to me seems to be in these two for the moment... and as Watergate taught us all, just "follow the money."