• by Bill McCloskey , November 6, 2001

Okay, I guess it is finally time to get around to giving my predictions for 2002. In this column I’ve reviewed my 2001 predictions and I’ve talked about companies to watch for 2002. But I haven’t actually gotten around to predicting anything yet for 2002.

So…I guess it is time.

I really don’t sound too enthusiastic, do I? There are a couple of reasons for that:

One reason is that this prediction thing has always gotten me into trouble. There is always some company that gets upset with me (even when I’m right, or should I say, especially when I’m right). As soon as my predictions are published there are nasty phone calls, terse emails, and hastily called lunches because the company feels that “they’ve been out of touch” with me for too long and they need to explain all the great things they are doing.

And the other reason is that there really isn’t that much to predict for 2002. I don’t know if you remember that guy about 10 years ago who claimed that history was over. He even wrote a book about it. He didn’t mean that there was nothing going on, he just meant there was nothing meaningful going on. I sort of feel like that guy.

The big movements on the Internet are pretty much over, at least for next year. Next year is a period of refinement, consolidation, and clean up. So rather than 2002 predictions, these are more like 2002 predilections.

Email. The big question for 2002 is: what is going to happen with email? This is one of those subjects that the email guys feel a bit ambivalent about: no one wants to brag that their business is going to take off big time because of a national crisis. It’s like a wrecking crew breaking out the Champaign after an earthquake. But, as Emperor Joseph II said in the movie Amadeus: There it is.

The fact is, if there is any history generated at all next year on the Internet, it is going to be in the area of email. And particularly rich media email. Any direct marketers (especially traditional direct marketers) that are not at least looking hard at rich media email and giving themselves a crash course on the subject are going to be in the corner wearing dunce caps by 2003.

Wireless and ITV. This will also be big. Just not here in the United States. As hard as it is to believe, ITV is an actual business in Europe, especially in England. And people take wireless seriously there also, where their cell phones can actually accommodate a business setting up shop on the dial pad. Here in the United States, the growth in wireless advertising will happen around the PDA – which in most cases isn’t even wireless since major players in this space, like Vindigo, update their ads when users are hot syncing their Palms to their Internet connected computers. Only Street Beam seems to be a truly wireless PDA advertising technology. And with the economy the way it is, don’t expect new companies or products to come streaming into this space, at least for a while.

Which brings us to Streaming. Like email, streaming companies will benefit from the fallout of 9/11 and the anthrax scare, especially in the B2B sector. The other day I was talking to Gary Mccoy from Talkway, a company that makes it easy to send video messages in personal email. He followed up on our conversation by communicating to me in a video email. I got to see what Gary looked like as he explained what he was going to do to follow up on our conversation. It was a very effective way of communicating and one that put me in much closer contact with Gary than a plain text message or even a phone call could have. Expect to see more like it soon.

Macromedia Flash. The impression numbers for Flash ads just keep going up – dramatically - every week. The first week of September there were about 100 million Flash ad impressions. Last week there were more than 200 million. Every week it just steadily grows. Again, no history here: just a continuation of the sure and steady growth that began in 2001 for Flash advertising. Expect the next version of the Flash tracking kit to be out before the end of the year with support for tracking multiple objects in a Flash banner.

AOL. With the inclusion of both the Viewpoint player in AOL 7.0 and support for Bluestreak’s rich media ads, the big story of 2002 might just be that the AOL proprietary service will lead the charge for rich media advertising. At least that it the hope. The question remains whether AOL will realize what it has under the hood and can communicate that not only to their advertisers but to their own ad sales team, or not. If they do, expect to have to pay the monthly nut if you want to view what could be the best interactive ads of 2002.

So there they are: my 2002 Predilections. Hopefully, I haven’t offended anyone, but just in case, I’m taking my phone off the hook for a week. But I’m always available for a free lunch!

-- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies.