• by Jim Meskauskas , December 21, 2004

I always hated feeling like an outsider; but from childhood on through early adulthood I consistently found myself there.

As a kid in grade school, I was reading Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain" books while the other kids were practicing basketball.

In high school, I quit my starting position on the football as right guard because I wanted to do theater.

In college, while the kids were joining the Greek system, listening to the Rolling Stones and Jesus Jones, and drinking Meister Brau, I was living in a house with a stolen statue of Ronald McDonald on the roof, listening to Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Big Black, and drinking Sheaf Stout.

As I've gotten older, I care less about this sort of thing; but, for fear of going into the holiday feeling as though I've been left out, I'm going to join the fray and cast my lots with predictions for the year 2005.

This past year was truly something else for the online advertising business. Spending is up; in November the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that Internet advertising totaled approximately $2.43 billion in the third quarter of 2004, the eighth quarter in a row that has seen increases, and the fourth to set a record for spending.

Behavioral targeting, something that was only hinted at just 18 months ago is now front-page news. Rich media is so common that the distinctive prefix "rich" is almost meaningless. And some of the Web's biggest publishers saw their per-share earnings up, up, up.

At this time I'd like to lay down MY predictions for 2005.

1. Behavioral targeting technology is married to advertising networks. Whether it is an existing ad network adopting the use of behavioral targeting enablers like Tacoda Systems or Revenue Science, or large publishers organizing around the behavioral targeting principle much the way some did with dayparting (the At-Work Brand network of CBS MarketWatch, CNET Networks, NYTimes.com, USATODAY.com, and Weather.com). It is probably not the silver bullet some enthusiasts hope it is - in some instances it is more akin to the Holy Grail - but part of realizing behavioral targeting's full potential is going to require applying the means by which it is carried out across an entire media buy.

2. Video will be the "new" rich media. What I mean by this is that the same kind of enthusiasm that accompanied the free-floating formats like Eyeblaster, CheckM8, Unicast, and others will settle upon mainstream marketers. The subject of video has already seen plenty of daylight, and this year's Winter 2004 iMedia Creative Competition winner was a video spot for American Airline from TM Advertising (created exclusively for use on the Web). The growing ubiquity of broadband coupled with increased advertising presence of CPG advertisers will bring video to the front of the room. Sadly, I also predict that most of this trend will be borne on the back of video repurposed from pre-existing television spots.

3. AOL will again be the most potent publisher on the Web and the most successful at garnering ad dollars. I do not say this to slight other publishers. I say this because content is the once and future king of advertising. It always has been and it always will be, and the OPA confirmed it again last week in their 2004 Online Media Industry Year-in-Review. By virtue of being a part of Time Warner (yes, I know we don't talk about that any more), AOL has access to more content than any other online publisher on Earth. It appears that they are now ready to start leveraging it. By moving more content back outside the walled garden where it was taken just a couple of years ago and making it available to audiences, they will have the most diverse sets of audiences that will also be the easiest to find.

4. The other portals will develop their own content. AOL has Time Warner. Yahoo! and MSN have... Yahoo! and MSN. These two players are going to start developing serious content on their own - or start buying it from someone else on an exclusive basis. Yahoo!'s done a pretty good job over the years with entertainment content, and Terry Semel's provenance has lent itself well to this. Yahoo! Finance and Sports have also been important in this respect. But getting more original content and getting audiences to spend more time with it is going to be the goal in '05.

5. Time spent with media online is going to FINALLY be an important consideration when buying media. I've predicted this a number of times over the last four or five years, but this time, it is really going to happen. Because of this, having all that content I was talking about is going to be important.

6. And my final prediction.... The AOL CD will be as ubiquitous among media planners and buyers as the software CD was in years past!

Happy Christmahanakwanzaka, everyone!