• by January 12, 2001

Ad-based Future

A report by Brent Marcus, released in December by Digitrends Magazine, points out that there will be many more opportunities for advertisers to buy cost effective space on the Internet over the next 5 years. Some of these moves present buyers with some tactical long range benefits.

Drawing from a report from Forrester Research, he says that Forrester's analysts project that by 2005, ad-based business models will thrive, supported by $27 billion in ad revenues, and that advertisers unwilling to pay exorbitant amounts for prime spots will find other sites to buy space on. The report suggests that advertisers take advantage of these market changes and secure long-term deals now with news and entertainment sites.

Here’s how Forrester sees it. By 2004, the surge of ad dollars to profitable content sites will result in thousands of entrepreneurs starting new ones. The vast majority will fail because they can't get viewers. Big media companies will be able to successfully launch new properties by funneling their existing traffic to them.

These ad networks have found a great niche in aggregating page views from small sites in order to resell them to advertisers. These trends will lead to the formation of eMarketplaces for online ads. Profile integration will allow marketers to say, "I need 100,000 page views on music-related pages for young women that own cars but not MP3 players -- tonight," and receive bids from large and small content sites.

And, as advertisers use optimization services, other media will start to feel the pressure and be forced to play along. New statistical profiling techniques will optimize advertising across and within media.

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