• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, January 12, 2011

Wow!  Every day I read through my Twitter feed and see another posting that "so-and-so" predicts 2011 will be a year of continued growth for online advertising.  I love reading this news, but the thing I find funny is that after 17 years of building the business, it's still difficult to predict what the business will look like in 10 years!

I had a conversation recently with Doug Weaver of the Upstream Group about this very topic, and he raised some questions in my mind that sparked this article.  As he so eloquently pointed out, back in the 1990s we thought InfoSeek and Alta Vista would rule search and that Yahoo would be the dominant online publisher.    In the mid-2000s, we thought and no one would be able to compete with MySpace, which was going to rule social media them.  From about 1994 through 2001, most of the business relied on the 468x60 banner -- but then SFBIG held a funeral for the banner, proclaiming it as dead as a doornail.  

I mean, come on  -- lots of people still think the click is a valuable metric!

The business is continuing to grow and evolve.  The Web has expanded from the computer to your phone (and finally, from what I see out of CES, it will make the long-awaited jump to my kitchen appliances).  Web publishing has advanced from static, hard-coded pages to multiplatform video publishing and users can't get enough of it!  In 10 years the platform could just as easily integrate 3D holographic projections and be completely removed from a tactile screen. Who knows? 

The advertising and marketing opportunities we see now may have the legs to continue, but most likely we'll see continued evolution.   How will marketers use social -- and will they integrate sharing and social functionality into all aspects of their marketing?  How will digital continue to affect traditional marketing, from digital TV to digital out-of-home?  What new platforms and companies will be created to further improve and create efficiencies in the business of connecting consumers and brands?

There are two ways to plan for what the future may hold.  The first is to keep a close eye on the market leaders and evaluate, based on your own knowledge, whether you think they're headed in the right direction.  The other way to plan is to keep an eye out and an ear to the ground, so you can stay on top of the innovations being generated by the start-up world.  The combined analysis of industry leaders and industry innovators is a formula for success.

The industry leaders these days are Apple, Google, Facebook, Groupon and a handful of others.  These are the companies setting the standards for the majority of advertisers in the current economic climate.  They may not all represent large publishers, but they're first to be mentioned in the discussion of online advertising.  These are the companies that control the locations, the creative mindset and the bulk of the conversation for Fortune 500 brands.  The ideas they manifest and manage are good snapshots of what the industry is doing as a whole right now, and by keeping a close eye on performance, feedback and ease of use, you can determine the potential lifespan of the opportunities they bring to the table.

On the flipside, the innovators list is too long to write here, but includes such companies as FlipBoard, FourSquare, Twitter and many, many others.   These are the hard companies to follow simply because you can't track them all.  There are too many to count, and they're all moving at the speed of light.  What you can do is keep track of the executions they implement with big-name partners.  When a large brand partners with one of these smaller, more innovative players, then you end up with an idea that has some legs.  In many cases performance will be strong and feedback will be positive, but the most important element is ease of use -- or, how difficult was it to work with those guys?

The ease-of-use question is the most difficult to uncover, but also the most applicable to future growth.  Through the course of the history of the Internet ad business, we've witnessed the birth and death of literally hundreds of thousands of companies, and one of the unifying factors for the dead ones is that they were too difficult to implement.  A great idea may have been delivered, but if it was too complex and took too many person-hours to work, it will likely not be pursued again.

So to that end, I leave you with a question: If the future is so bright for the Internet advertising business, where do you see the business headed?  If money continues to pour into the landscape, where will it end up?  Share your ideas on the Spin Board and let us know what you think!