The Long Tail is a term that was coined in a 2004 article in Wired and then was turned into a book – specifically, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson.

The basic premise is that because of the Internet and it’s infinitely wide and incredibly low-cost distribution capabilities, the big “hits” of popular culture (be they movies, music, books, etc.) are no longer the only things that will make money. Now, the “misses” will also be money-makers.

“With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.”

This large volume of small purchases (selling less of more) is what Anderson calls The Long Tail.

The best way to get a grasp on this concept is by reading the original Wired article, so go read that now if you’re interested in this topic. Anderson also has a blog that provides continuing coverage and analysis. The Wikipedia entry is here.

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This is happening in Sweden, not the U.S., but still. This is just the beginning.

And this article from PaidContent U.K. says that Britian and Denmark will be next.

“Sweden will this year become the first country where internet ad spending will surpass that given over to TV ads, according to the This Year, Next Year 2008 forecast from WPP’s heavyweight Group M ad buying agency, released quietly last month. The UK will fall just short of the same watershed this year, finishing 2008 with online accounting for 24.8 percent of ad spend, just shy of the 26 gobbled up by TV (in Sweden, it will be 19.5 percent to the web, 19.2 percent to TV). But online will overtake telly in Britain and Denmark early in ‘09, the group predicts.”

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