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Quite simply, digital media equals performance-based marketing. As media becomes digital, personal, and controllable, we move from the old marketing model to the new marketing model.

Consider one example: paper coupons.

Annually, three billion coupons are distributed in the United States of America. That's 1000 coupons per family. When I get the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday the center of the paper must way about three pounds. I just pick it up and throw it away.

And it's not just the Sunday paper. There are enormous quantities of freestanding inserts and coupons.

I sit on the board of a pizza chain -- Round Table Pizza -- and, it costs us between three and four dollars per redeemed coupon, which reflects a terrible cost of printing it, distributing it. And to top it all off we are only getting three percent redemption. That's 97 percent thrown away. Even worse: of the three percent, one third of that is fraudulent. So, you have a two percent effective rate. That's 98 percent failure. Yet, we are still doing it. Go to any CMO of a consumer packaged goods company in America, and they are still giving out paper coupons, freestanding inserts. There is a better way.

Consider Coupons.com, which provides targeted internet coupons. The consumer selects the product and categories she wants. If you have got a child under twelve months at home, you select Huggies and Pampers. If you don't, you don't select it.

Redemption rates go from three percent to ten to fifteen percent, and the marketers only pay when the consumer prints the coupon.

Suddenly, the marketer is paying on the delivery of a printed coupon that that consumer wants to get and hits the print button on the computer in order to get. And, a new feature allows a streaming video to show a commercial in the coupon itself. For example, Procter & Gamble has an Oil of Olay commercial that sells the product, and then allows the consumer to print the coupon if it really intrigues her.

It's an astonishing difference: there is virtually no cost of distribution. Targeted consumers say, "I want this product category. I am interested in this product." They print out the coupon, and the marketer pay per print.

(Full disclosure, I have a professional relationship with Coupons.com.)

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