• Advertising Age, Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:15 AM

Web 2.0 still has yet to prove itself, monetarily speaking, but some Internet watchers are already looking ahead to Web 3.0 and the notion of the "semantic Web." in particular. Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the worldwide Web, coined the phrase nearly 10 years ago. His vision was that all Web data would one day be read and interpreted by machines. In other words, "the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful," reports Ad Age.

In turn, this will help solve some of marketing's biggest problems. Once computers start to interpret the meaning behind the functions they execute, it will allow marketers to target their ads much more effectively. The ability to analyze the meaning behind a group of keywords is markedly more useful to a marketer than targeting by keyword.

Another area where the semantic technology will be particularly effective is measuring ad effectiveness. Right now, we can measure reach and exposure, but how can marketers measure the quality of their interactions with consumers? Measurement tools will move away from tagging keywords to understanding conversations as they happen.

Read the whole story at Advertising Age »