• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 17, 2008

Gian Fulgoni may have started his presentation on a bearish note, but he ended it on a bullish one. His main reason for optimism: Online advertising has a profound return on investment that goes well beyond clicks. Fulgoni calls this phenomenon the “latency” effect, and showed data suggesting that the preponderance of online advertising’s impact happens “offline,” and frequently a lot time after someone was exposed to an online ad or search. In other words: It’s a branding medium.

“The latency metric he was talking about is really the holy grail of marketing,” gushed OMMA Hollywood conference chair Cory Treffiletti, following Fulgoni’s presentation.

Another big reason for Fulgoni’s optimism is in the numbers. Not clicks, but consumer usage. Citing what may have been the first statistic every invoked of its kind, Fulgoni said comScore data now estimates that the total number of online impressions is about twice the size of television’s. The problem, he said, is that only about 2% of online’s impressions are video-based content or advertising.

As video becomes a bigger factor, Fulgoni believes the CPMs will rise, and that the Internet could well surpass television as the No. 1 advertising medium.