• by Joe Mandese , May 7, 2009

What will we be discussing and listening to the search pundits discuss a year from now down in Captiva. Well, aside from the fate of Osprey, they’re going to be talking about the blurring of the line between display and performance-based media.

That’s what Microsoft’s Brian Boland predicted during the search panel today.

“I think the next year there’s going to be an explosion of contextual advertising, and an explosion of performance display,” he said, adding that there would be a corresponding erosion of the lines dividing the budgets between the two practices.

Or, if you believe Google’s John Nicoletti, it’s going to be the emergence of search as an “account planning tool.”

“This is the kind of data that account planners in traditional agencies sort of guess at,” Nicoletti noted, adding, “I think you’re going to see other parts of the organization from chief marketing officers down to fulfillment taking real interest in these tools.”