Rob Hof has a post about online advertising showing signs of weakness. I would generally agree with Rob, but would say it’s growing in another direction.
I’ve seen this movie before in 1998. The ad business is changing again. Back in 1998 the rage was impressions impressions impressions..it’s was all about banner ads. Then it became clear impressions and paying for traffic wasn’t working for advertisers – enter performance advertising – the paid keyword.
Today we are in a similar dynamic. Sure the ad market is showing weakness but it’s not because it isn’t effective. It’s because the CPM don’t get the job done for advertisers and publishers. New products will be coming…
I’ve been saying on this blog and other places that CPM will be one small feature of the future online advertising market. The future is about the social graph..the next Google will emerge from the new dynamics and relevance coming out of the social graph infrastructure (yes that would include data).
Microcontent is the big trend that will be the preferred ad unit in the future. As I have been saying for years – In Social Networks – The Content is the Ad.
Update: eMarketer has social advertising data including key trends and growth rates.
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