• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 26, 2011

Do you sometimes feel like you need to be a geek inside a NASA control room in order to follow what's going on with online advertising and marketing business? If you do, you're not alone, says OMMA Global New York opening keynoter Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who just rattled off a dizzying array of radical digital marketing platforms that are shaking up the world as we know it.

But fear not, says Wilson, "There's light at the end of the tunnel, because this is a good thing."

The dizzying array of digital change is a good thing, he says, because it is giving marketers more "performance out of advertising" when it is "native to the medium you are promoting in." He said integral Facebook ads on Facebook work better than banner ads on Facebook, etc.

"If you tailor your work to operate in these systems and they work better," he said, explaining why all the digital elbow grease will be well worth the effort of marketers and agencies. And if you're a bit overwhelmed, Wilson threw a plug out to a couple of industry resources – digitally-focused media shops, like MDC Partners' The Media Kitchen, and search and social platform Clickable – to name a couple.

It might be a good idea to begin working with one of those experts, because Wilson said things are about to change even more, noting that a new, emerging category like "streaming audio" is paused to explode, and will challenge the 50-year-old, $20 billion radio business.

"It didn't exist five years ago," Wilson said, but this year it is estimated to have 80 million users, which will grow to 100 million next year. And they're "not just listening to Pandora," Wilson said, citing a statistic that 73% of audio streaming users change their station several times a day.

Another big game-changer that's coming, he said, is "venue-based advertising."

"Foursquare now has a billion check-ins. That is a billion times someone has said I am here right now," Wlison said, noting that are more than half a million merchants on Foursquare that are "poised to do venue-based advertising."