By Mark Wheeler
It’s a term already used way too much. In fact, since it was coined in 2005, “Web 2.0” has been used to refer to such a variety of Internet incarnations that it doesn’t necessarily help anymore, instead it denotes some kind of homogenous future-Web.
But noting the fact that it is used with such frequency, it becomes apparent that everyone—the broadband-enabled masses, the content providers and creators, businesses, vendors, agencies and organisations—is looking for an improved Internet, where its offerings rise to meet our exploding demands and are only matched by the advertising opportunities it creates. But is it really that simple?
Of course it isn’t, but there is clearly a bit of excitement around—“Bubble 2.0” has been its more cynical recasting. The emerging possibilities online have people excited. Late last year many research organisations began to really examine the online advertising phenomenon. By then it was already clear that more traditional forms of marketing were beginning to suffer—or more precisely, online advertising was beginning to attract more of the market.
Since 2003 online advertising revenue has been steadily rising but according to Forrester, it is still disproportionately much less than the amount of time consumers spend online. A US study by the Interactive Advertising Beureu (IAB) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) found companies this year spent 37 percent more money in online advertising than last year. The second quarter 2006 (to which the results relate) marks the seventh consecutive quarter that online advertising revenue has grown.
According to Forrester, in the US back in 2004 the amount of time people spent online was longer than they spent watching TV. And if you consider other significant media such as newspapers, radio and magazines, online activity outpaces all of these together. Yet spending for online advertising is still the smallest of the lot, and the opportunists and entrepreneurs seem to know it.
In April this year San Francisco hosted ad:tech, a conference for interactive advertising and marketing sorts. Forrester’s subsequent report summarily concludes that competition for marketers’ interactive dollars is ferocious and that particularly in respect to search marketing and behavioural targeting, start ups are entering the marketing services space with record speed.
Dominic Finnegan, director of presales at nineMSN says: “In Australia, online advertising is already larger than cinema and outdoor, and if the growth rate continues at the same rate it will be bigger than magazines and radio by early 2007. We are already seeing the shift of dollars to the online space.”
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