NYTimes.com, CBS MarketWatch.com, Weather.com, USAToday.com, and CNET have launched something called the "At Work Brand Network," to jointly sell advertising across their collective sites.

This sounds to me like a smaller, less useful competitor to DoubleClick. The rationale is to cut out the middleman and get more attention from the sales force. I can see why this would be attractive to the sites participating, but my question is:

Does this solve any problems for the advertiser?

If not, it's futile