• by Mark Naples , November 18, 2004

I'm not talking about getting your shopping completed early, everyone. I'm talking about the kind of marketing and operations surge that industry insiders are warning about in the next 30 days.

Of course, with recent research pointing to double or maybe triple digit growth in online ad budgets for next year, the kind of spike that I think we can all anticipate for the holidays this year may not sag or even plateau through Valentine's Day.

Think about it, especially those of you in online retailing. The image in my mind is one of multiple trucks waiting to unload their merchandise at the docks of an enormous mall, but unable to because there aren't enough employees to handle the boxes, not enough to code the merchandise and stock it, and not enough to man the cash registers and get happy shoppers out the door.

Anyone who spent a few hours on the exhibit floor at Ad:Tech knows what I'm talking about. In what seemed to me an unusual switch, fewer people who attended last week were talking afterwards about the panels, and more were talking about the deal volume on the floor and the sheer number of companies who were actively recruiting talent. Building marketing teams is one thing I do for my own clients, and every single one of them is hiring, with no fewer than a dozen others having approached me on the floor at Ad:Tech to see if I could help them get new talent.

Obviously, the news is good for very many people in our industry right now. I just hope that decision makers at companies can ride this wave that's coming. Anyone who surfs knows that you have to paddle like hell to get out to the really big breaks and enjoy the ride. But, if you're not ready to work that hard and prepare for it, the big waves can really hurt you.

This was on my mind again Wednesday, at the IAB Annual Meeting where I was fortunate enough to be moderator on a behavioral marketing panel that featured some of the really bright lights in our business. Behavioral, to me, represents the most interesting segment of our industry not just because of the controversy around privacy, but also because it is the one segment so unique of our space that it renders moot the old debate about whether we're in the direct response business or the branding business.

Behavioral marketing, whether it's done the way that Revenue Science and Tacoda do it, or the way Claria and WhenU do it, can only be done with the kind of results these companies are driving when it's done via interactive. Others may say that traditional-style telemarketing is also a form of behavioral targeting. But, the breadth and depth of information available online, and the speed with which it's available, make this area the place for serious growth in the next year.

Just ask The New York Times, whose Bob Tedeschi did a fantastic piece on Tacoda's network launch this past Monday.

If our most arcane and controversial industry segment is mainstream enough and attractive enough for the Times and the IAB claims that industry revenue was up 40 percent from last year through June, I think Nielsen//NetRating's Charles Buchwalter and others are right. We're right on the crest of that big wave as an industry. We'd all better be ready to get up and ride.