• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 2, 2010

Automation and self-serve processes for paid search and display ad buys will become the only way to realize the full potential of online advertising. It will cut marketing and advertising costs for those using the tools and move more of the billions of advertising dollars online. Tech companies need to develop these tools for buying audience target segments, too.

Google and Microsoft have developed variations of tools for online paid search and display advertising. Companies like eXelate and Lotame created tools for in-house use to support clients, larger publishers, but tweaking them for small businesses to help with self-serve options will expand opportunities for so many more.

I only half agree with Lotame Chief Marketing Officer Eric Porres when he tells me if 2009 and the first six months in 2010 go down in history as the age of privacy, the remainder of 2010 and 2011 will become the age of transparency.

That "age of transparency" and move to self-service platforms began with Google AdWords, but didn't begin to make that transition to self-serve until this year. That's when Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, made an impact during the IAB conference presentation in February. Then we saw Trada emerge. The self-service paid search marketplace will enable small local businesses whose owners don't understand online advertising to tap into paid search.

Porres says Lotame is working to create a publisher self-serve signup platform that lets publishers build and buy targeted audience segments. Lotame expects to have the platform up and running in about three weeks. Some of the 30 engineers in the Maryland office have been working to finish the project. Other than that Porres had little to share except his belief "audiences can be built in a transparent way, truly white hat. They are not based on third and fourth party data based on households."

Self-service tools will give businesses the ability to quickly scale to reach consumers. A little later today, you'll hear about Bizo BizAds, a self-service platform from Bizo that launched Wednesday. It offers precise demographic targeting, based on the bizographic data that truly impacts the buying process. The tool aims to support small and medium size businesses that prefer not to, or can't, spend a lot on online advertising.