I recently wrote a piece for Ad Age on the topic of disintermediation and media, and the folks there promised to put it outside registration, which they've finally done.

A few choice nuts:

Disintermediation is overrated.

Those who fear disintermediation should in fact be afraid of irrelevance -- disintermediation is just another way of saying that you’ve become irrelevant to your customers. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a customer, or middlemen of some sort who service that customer, or that the core proposition of your business has disappeared. It just means you’re in a bit of a rut, and as much as you might pine for the past, it’s probably time to rethink things before it’s too late.

....But the truth is, the products that are threatened by disintermediation are not imperiled because of technology; they are imperiled because they are based on models that offer less value to the customer than competing alternatives. In example after example, the middleman isn’t being cut out. He’s simply being replaced by a better one.

This is worth repeating: What we have grown to call disintermediation is, at the end of the day, simply the cold reality of someone doing our job better than we are. If you sense the cold breath of “disintermediation” on your back, more likely than not a bunch of upstarts are delivering your business’ core value proposition for less cost and in a better fashion than you are. And while it seems a bit obvious, it’s nevertheless true: You’ve probably fallen victim to old Railroad disease - you thought you were in the train business, but meanwhile, the other guys have figured out a better approach to moving cargo around the country.

Meanwhile, Fortune has another take on ad models shifting here.