• by Seana Mulcahy , July 24, 2006

Good morning, dear readers. I've been thinking a lot about the digital space many of us eat, sleep and breathe. Wow, has it changed--even in the past year. Nothing is "standard" anymore. More and more sites, blogs and podcasts are popping up. Netizens are sharing online music and videos more than ever. They IM, text, tag and surf faster than ever.

As a media gal, I'm always on the lookout for the new and trendy versus the new and stable. Lately I feel like things are turned upside down a bit and are getting harder to predict. I truly believe all media (online and offline) is and will continue to be fragmented. There are so many choices out there. It is truly an on-demand world.

As far as our beloved online space goes, the landscape is getting more peer-to-peer, more viral, more opt-in, more downloadable, watchable...sticky. The "duh" factor is that search and e-mail are the most popular online activities (in that order). That hasn't changed much. However, what people e-mail and search for has changed. Also, how they use e-mail and search has changed as well.

Both activities have been a focal point for many of us online advertisers and marketers. We desire to create a one-to-one communication with online users. We try to be laser- focused when we craft the lingo on our Web sites and press releases. We do this so our rankings in search engines will grow naturally. We parlay paid search plans on top of these disciplines to garner more share of voice, boost our traffic, and obtain conversions.

This too is getting super-fragmented. According to eMarketer, e-mail volume in the United States is projected to nearly double from 1.5 trillion in 2003, to 2.7 trillion in 2007. ComScore reports that there are now 6,400,000 searches conducted per day.

I beg the question--what are users searching and e-mailing these days? I often check out the Lycos 50. While it's cool to see what folks are searching for, it is equally scary to this writer. For instance, for the week of July 12, these were the top ten searches: Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton, Spyware, MySpace, Poker, RuneScape, Pokemon, Golf, Britney Spears and WWE.

So what does this tell us as advertisers and marketers? No, not that the average online users is a little weird. Well, figure the pyschographics you can pull from search words: pop culture, gaming, entertainment (adult and kids), sporting events, music, etc. You get the drift.

The penetration of video online is by no means a surprise to me. The popularity of video isn't either. Let's face it; video is cool--even on a small screen (if you can see it). According to Wikipedia, YouTube is currently the fastest-growing Web site on the World Wide Web; it's ranked as the 17th most popular Web site on a site that reports on Web usage, Alexa. According to Alexa, YouTube is far outpacing even MySpace's growth.

On July 16, YouTube announced that 100 million clips are watched on the site every day. 65,000 new videos are uploaded every day. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Why am I going on about this, you ask? Well, simply put, we need to be ahead of the curve in regard to this sliding landscape. Online users have information, ads, entertainment, etc. blazing by them non-stop. There is a tremendous amount of clutter. My guess is that will only continue to grow. We need to take a good look at how pop culture, entertainment, video, word-of-mouth, etc. can affect our brand awareness and, moreover, brand perception.

We need to carefully assess what our target audience wants, what media they consume offline and online, how often they go online, where they go online, how much time they spend online, who they are influenced by, what they pass along to friends and colleagues via word-of mouth, e-mail and the like.

So I turn this over to you, dear readers. Do you agree that our online landscape is changing rapidly? How do we take all these new sites and technologies as they apply to targeting our prospects and customers? What's a media gal to do these days? Post to the SPIN blog so we can further discuss.

In the interim, Amy Auerbach will be filling in for me next week while I'm in Nantucket. Thanks, Amy. I'll see y'all in two weeks.