Commentary
Aside From Search, What Media Will Drive Online Advertising In 2012?
- by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 9, 2011
Citigroup Analyst Neil Doshi revealed in his keynote on Thursday at the Search Insider Summit why mobile, TV coming online, Facebook, cloud services, local ad markets, and
digital goods will become long-term online advertising growth strategies for online advertising.
Doshi discussed a Citigroup survey of U.S. and European CIOs who plan to invest in some sort of cloud service within the next 12 months. The services will likely be supported by companies such as Google, Akamai, Amazon, and Apple. These strategies have mostly emerged as small services, conducted on a trial basis.
And as Doshi said, it comes as no surprise that security remains the greatest concern regarding cloud services. Demonstrating the focus on cloud services, IBM on Thursday said it would acquire DemandTec for $440 million in cash.
The deal is intended to accelerate IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative with new cloud-based, analytics software that can help retailers improve price, promotion and merchandising strategies supporting customers. Extending these capabilities to the cloud with DemandTec should give organizations quick access to consumer information at a low cost -- providing instant return on investment, according to Big Blue.
More than 450 global customers rely on DemandTec across retail, consumer goods and other business-to-consumer industries, including Best Buy, ConAgra Foods, PETCO, Home Depot, and Target.
Brands will also continue to focus on local advertising and search services. Each year for the past 10 has demonstrated the potential to become the year for local advertising -- but it never really panned out, Doshi said, until a "large, local daily deals company" emerged and showed how to drive traffic to local businesses.
Groupon has managed to reach $1 billion in revenue faster than any other Internet company in the history of the Web, Doshi said. Local daily deals can be instrumental in helping brands tap into local markets.
Laurie Sullivan is a writer and editor for MediaPost. You can reach Laurie at lauriesullivan@gmail.com.
SEO - In 2012 Search Engine Optimization will finally have certification and standards that allow businesses and others to understand what it is, get services at a reasonable cost, and use it to increase their business volume. It is also the year that the world ends.
Search Marketing - Early 2012 the massive ongoing fraud inherent with PPC search marketing is exposed. The public outcry is such that search engines are forced to adopt a new "Bid For Placement" model where advertisers bid for the right to have their ad appear for a set amount of time. They are no long charged by the click. Search engines and ad publishers see a cut in revenue while those that were doing click fraud try to shut down the Internet in protest. The fraudsters fail and the subsequent increase in profitability catapults the US economy out of it's recession and drags the rest of the world along. That is until we read the end of the world.
Domain Names - This will be the year that the public finally understands that domains are virtual real estate with a cost of entry that almost all can afford. People will start to be proud that their email address is not under the domain of a company like "AOL", "Gmail", of "Comcast". Every company will have at least one domain name and all domains will be required to provide something useful to a visitor, even if it is just mindless advertising.
Mid 2012 marks the new domain name era where all domains get price fixed at $6 a year. And government regulations set rules for aftermarket pricing and commerce. Any domain that sells for over $100 is taxed at 50% of the sales price. The black market for domains will be established during the same time, but it quickly ends along with the rest of the world.
Social Networking - In 2012 the balloon deflates and the wheels come off as a new fad takes hold. The new standard for time-wasting is run by a company that stays modest and actually lets it's users decide what should be offered and how things work. The company will be the first to be profitable from day one and be owned by all the members. It will grow to dominate other areas online including email, advertising, dating, commerce, and gossip. The model will be so strong and self-sustaining it will last 1,000 years; or it would if the world had not ended in 2012.
WhiteCells - In 2012 an international committee will agree on standards for an "Anti-virus Virus". Known computing platform standards will be collected and used to create a WhiteCell program that communicates with a central server and is able to live in our computers and detect and destroy anything harmful. It can also triangulate the source of any viruses and alert authorities so they can make an arrest. After it's deployment in mid 2012 it will have just enough time to rid 99.999% of the world's computers from threats before the world ends.
I'm tracking a few other trends, but I don't have enough data yet to post a prediction...