In almost every business sector you can think of, companies and individuals try to find ways to rid themselves of a sometimes pesky partner:  the dreaded "middleman".  The middleman, whoever he, she, or it may be, usually takes something for its service.  Most of the time its money.  And if you're a business, money is what its all about.

According to an article at Marketing Pilgrim, a new product being announced today is designed to remove the granddaddies of middlemen in search advertising:  the search engines.

FAST, the company behind the original version of AllTheWeb, has developed a new product called AdMomentum that gets rid of the need for companies to employ Google, Yahoo, and other online advertising powerhouses.  AdMomentum will give website owners the ability to create their own in-house advertising networks.  By removing search engines from the equation, FAST hopes its product will help website owners keep more of their money.

In the current system, website owners get a share of revenues made from paid advertising deployed and managed by search engines.  According to SFGate.com, Google paid $6.7 of its $20 billion in advertising revenue with website owners over the past three years.  AdMomentum would let website owners have more control over that revenue.

As of this writing, FAST hasn't announced the service on their website.  And no details have emerged over what the service will cost website owners.  But I'm sure it won't be free.  In fact, I'd be surprised if it wasn't based on a revenue-sharing system.  So that leaves me with one question:

How is AdMomentum going to be any different than AdSense of YPN?

We'll have to wait and see how the system works when more details are released.  But something tells me AdMoment isn't as much about advertising freedom as it is about replacing one middleman for another.  But I could be wrong.