A Dickensian View of Online Marketing
In the holiday spirit, I thought I might borrow a play from Charles Dickens and talk about the past, present and future of online marketing. Lisa Picarille from Revenue Magazine asked me to ponder to some questions about online marketing for an upcoming issue. Lisa said it was fine to share, so I though I’d take a moment to reflect between Christmas and New Years.
1. What’s been the biggest change in affiliate marketing over the last two years?
Google’s AdSense altered the pay for performance landscape forever!
2. What’s been the greatest development in online marketing during the last 24 months?
Complete and total domination of the search channel. To quote the Pew Internet in American Life Project:
“The most recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day…..This means that the number of those using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005….This means that the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary internet activity on any given day.
3. How would you describe the state of online marketing right now?
As an adolescent that has grown up from a child, but is still in a constant state of change, and trying out new things. However, we have yet to see what the online marketing space will blossom into as an adult. Also, I think we are seeing an consolidation occur with companies such as ValueClick, Experian Interactive, IAC, Fox and others becoming online marketing powerhouses.
4. What are the largest hurdles for online marketing going forward?
From a strategic perspective, it’s to bridge the gap between traditional brand/media advertising with the means to track and measure the ROI of online marketing. Big brand advertisers and agencies were discussing this constantly at the last Ad:Tech.
More tactically, it’s to clean up the sleaze factor of online marketing including hammering the nail in the coffin on spyware and spam issues as well as developing better tracking technology than crumbling cookies.
5. Where do you expect online marketing to be two years from now?
It will be a bigger percent of overall ad budgets, even more consolidated in the search channel and in the interactive powerhouses, more personalized through technology such as behavioral marketing, and all media spend will be able to be tracked and measure in terms of ROI to a much more in-depth level than it is today.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS ALL!
