Is the future a classified ad?

Recently I was lucky enough to be chatting with Craig from AMVBBDO about things and we were shooting the breeze about 'stuff' and he mentioned that he had been to a conference all about the 'Longtail' . He mentioned his take on the outcome of the talk and he came up with something which I think is worthy of examination:

'Brands exist only to fill the gap left by incomplete information'

Interesting when seen against the massive rise in the use of classified advertising on Google for example. Could this be true? I will have to ponder this one and write it up later this week.