Seven years ago there were less than 50 online ad networks. Today there are more than 300. But that number could shrink just as quickly, reports Lucia Moses in MediaWeek. At least, that's what her executive sources at publishers Rodale, Martha Stewart and Forbes hope. Rodale's MaryAnn Bekkedahl says that when her company experimented with an ad network, it served ads in the wrong language, broke exclusive arrangements with sponsors, and tried to put a fast-food ad in on a fitness site. Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller tells Moses Forbes has the solution: It offers advertising clients its own third-party sites handpicked by the company for editorial compatibility. Martha Stewart Livig Omnimedia does the same thing with its Martha’s Circle, co-CEO Wenda Harris Millard says, because “magazines are wonderful brands and the networks are not going to protect [them]." But we know what's really going on here.Publishers are bad-mouthing ad networks, only to offer the smaller publishers who really need them their own networks instead. That's not cutting out the middleman to protect brands — that's steering away interlopers from outside the media business, while jealously guarding their relationships with Madison Avenue. Either way, smaller publishers which can't afford their own salespeople will get taken to the cleaners. It's just a question of who drives.

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There have been rumors that morale is low at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia ever since the departure of Susan Lyne last month. Then there was news today that the company axed 25 employees, which most certainly didn't do much to lift spirits. But that certainly doesn't seem to be the mood at the company offices judging by the chipper employee photos that Martha has been posting to her blog lately. Martha's been hanging around the office quite a bit this summer (that is, when she's not playing with her air-conditioned tractor) and look at all these satisfied employees she found! This tech guy seems pretty happy—someone even bought him a fan to keep from overheating. How about this cool shuttle bus that ferries staffers to Grand Central? And these customer service reps all have smiles on their faces (although they might just be excited their jobs haven't been outsourced to India yet). So step off, naysayers. This time around, Martha is coming armed with proof.

Is Martha Stewart co-CEO Wenda Harris Millard, a former Yahoo executive, a bit ungrateful? In this excerpt from an interview with BoomTown's Kara Swisher, Millard explains what's wrong with what Google's made everyone believe about online advertising. The story, as it's conventionally told here: Silicon Valley owes its rebirth to Google. Google's distributed ad network, AdSense, allowed startups to fund themselves before venture capitalists recovered enough from the bust at the turn of the century to take notice of them. Google's auction-sold search ads have earned the company so much cash, it can spend it almost willy-nilly. The problem: Google's impact on online advertising has been otherwise disastrous.

Susan Lyne, who took over Martha Stuart Living Omnimedia when its namesake went on a five-month vacation to the clink, is stepping down after failing to revive the company's ailing stock price. The CEO job will now be shared by two women: Wenda Harris Millard, president of the media division, and Robin Marino, who heads merchandising, neither of whom, it has to be said, holds a candle to Lyne in the Martha-lookalike department. MSLO's press release on the shakeup after the jump.

Bad news for TV, print and radio: heavy-spending packaged goods advertisers, such as $300 million-a-month Procter & Gamble, don't want to make annual ad-planning commitments anymore. Due to rising fuel, food, and commodity costs, these advertisers only want to commit to spending quarter by quarter. "The planning cycle has changed," Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia president Wenda Harris Millard told Silicon Alley insider. "This is wreaking havoc on media company forecasting." What Millard meant, of course, is old-media forecasting. Other than maybe Yahoo, AOL and MSN, Web companies aren't used to the luxury of sending customer invoices a year ahead of time.

There are women on the Internet. Did you know? Madison Avenue is just figuring this out, desperately looking for websites to stuff with female-targeted ad dollars. Lifetime, the cable network, just launched its own social network, mylifetime.com, with a lot of help from Glam Media's stable of female-centric blogs. Similarly, Warner Bros. announced entertainment and advice destination Mom Logic. Martha Stewart has launched Martha's Circle, an online ad network which represents other websites, and NBC Universal's iVIllage has struck a similar deal with Sugar Publishing. "It's kind of boring to say, but we really think content's king in this category," said Starcom's Jeff Marshall to AdAge. Boring, and false. The rule these days is sell the ads first, and find a place to put them later.