Virtuous cyclone…

When was the last time you saw the NYTimes direct an advertiser to the Washington Post?

Umm… never.

Just as newspapers rarely quote other newspapers and almost never link from their own websites to news on other sites, traditional publishers would never ever send an advertiser to a competitor.

Bred in the giant Internet ocean, bloggers have different DNA. They know what goes around comes around. They know instinctively that swarming networks of individuals are exponentially more powerful than over-engineered corporations. They know that, thanks to the blogosphere’s referals and passionate readers, a single blogger working part-time can generate 10 to 50 times more page impressions per keystroke than a traditional media employee working 9 to 5 X 49 weeks a year.

With this in mind, check out this Atrios post and watch the right column of Pandagon. Now there’s one ad. Check back at the end of the day.

In theory, Atrios is cannibalizing his own ad sales, since new blogad seller Pandagon is cheap right now and many Atrios advertisers will likely buy on Pandagon.

But bloggers don’t eat each other’s lunches. Bloggers are chewing into the big publishers, with rate cards that over-charge 50 to 100 times, and TV, which soaks up $50 billion from American advertisers every year, despite the fact the most viewers are out of the room when TV ads run.

Linking to each other as no publisher has dared before, bloggers create a virtuous cyclone of audience and commerce.

(Speaking of new bloggers selling blogads, check out Oliver Willis and Talkleft… with more coming later this week.)