Informa predicts 2012 online TV, video revenue to exceed $6 billion

By 2012 the North America could be the largest revenue-generating region of the globe.

by Helen Leggatt

That’s according to new research from Informa Telecoms & Media. The report, entitled "Online TV and Video: Beyond User-Generated Content", forecasts that legitimate online TV and video services will generate around $6.3 billion in 2012, around ten times that for 2006.

This evolution of broadcasting technology is coupled with a new generation that seeks a television channel complete with the interactivity and sociality they can get online. Simon Dyson, co-author of the report said "the TV business has already acknowledged some of the changes and is pushing concepts such as on-demand and digital video recorders. The rise of online TV and video is another step that tips the balance of power towards the consumer."

The report predicts that revenue from U.S. online TV and video revenue would top the spend chart at $4 billion, with the U.K. coming in second with an increase $42m last year to $708m in 2012.

Broadband penetration, another factor which will contribute to the rise in online TV and video, is also increasing. By 2012 it is predicted that the U.K. will have 79 percent of households subscribing to broadband, and the U.S. 76 percent. Japan and South Korea are expected to top the broadband ranks with 91 percent and 81 percent respectively.

While it all looks rosy for online content, broadcasters still need to negotiate piracy and copyright minefields.

Survey: Online TV ad revenue could grow by 55% in 200

Local online TV ad revenue this year could jump by 55% to $618 million, after recording a 41% growth rate to $399 million in 2006, according to a study for TVB by Borrell Associates

Survey: $10 Billion Spent on Search Marketing in '06

Mike Shields
FEBRUARY 08, 2007 -
Advertisers in North America laid out close to 10 billion dollars on search engine marketing in 2006, a year that saw a 62 percent spend increase versus 2005, according to an annual survey conducted by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

SEMPO found that, based on its survey of 587 search agencies and advertisers, spending in the medium will double by 2011, reaching $18.6 billion (SEMPO counts both paid search advertising and spending on companies’ internal search engine optimization in its dollar estimates, while other firms do not). According to the report, The State of Search Marketing 2006 Executive Summary, that rapid growth will be driven by continued advertiser demand, rising prices and a new wave of small-to-midsize businesses discovering the medium.

Not surprisingly, Google dominates the search advertising business. Among the marketers and agencies surveyed, 96 percent of them report using Google AdWords to promote their brands.

Yet despite its recent urgent push to improve its own search ad technology, Yahoo is on solid footing according to SEMPO respondents. More than four out of five advertisers--86 percent--say they have run ads on Yahoo’s search product.

Meanwhile MSN, which has struggled in a distant third-place position in the search race, even losing some market share in recent months, has made great strides among advertisers, found SEMPO. Sixty-eight percent of advertisers said they used MSN for their search campaigns in 2006, up from just 29 percent in 2005.

The reason for MSN’s surge is that despite low usage, the search engine’s ad environment is less cluttered, and it tends to deliver the right ads to users. “The ROI on MSN is extremely strong,” said Kevin Lee, co-founder of Did-it.com and chair of the SEMPO research committee. “And there is not anywhere near the competition, as it’s a less mature marketplace.”

Another less-than-mature marketplace is that of search advertising for brand advertisers. Despite claims that more and more brands are using the medium for branding, as most respondents reported, just 21 percent of search advertisers actually track or measure the branding impact of search for their campaigns.

Lee said that in practice, more brands are looking at a combination of search and branding metrics. “A lot of search marketers are being more holistic.”

Search Engine Ad Spending Forecast Up 39 Percent in '07

According to the second annual report on ad spending from Outsell, Inc., U.S. advertising is expected to grow 5.8 percent in 2007. The national study of advertisers, controlling about $6.5 billion of spending, shows that companies plan to increase their online spending by 18 percent this year, faster than for any other major media type. Advertisers also plan to raise their spending for advertising on search engines by 39 percent, the fastest of any online media method.

The survey of 1,010 advertisers and media types including online, print, events, TV/radio/movies, an overview of the reported findings includes:

• While the largest recipient of ad dollars (40 percent), print advertising will continue to lose share as online's share grows to 20 percent
• Online advertising spending for pay-per-click (PPC) ads will fall one percent in 2007, while cost-per-action ads' share will grow eight percent and online sponsorships' share will rise 12 percent (
• Forty-nine percent of advertisers have reduced or plan to reduce their PPC spending because of click fraud, up from 37 percent in the Spring of 2006. Advertisers rate online advertising very effective for branding, contrary to common wisdom that online is effective at generating leads, but is weak for branding(
• The share of TV/radio/movie ad spending will decline about 3.5 percent this year. Advertisers are redirecting more trade magazine ad dollars to events than they are moving to paid search

For more information on obtaining the complete report, please visit Outsell here.

Contextual Advertising - The New Web Market

I love where online marketing is going. That’s the best way I can say it. With each passing day, more and more advertisers are realizing old markets are old markets. Contextual advertising is the future of marketing…………period. A targeted campaign focuses advertisements based on the content being shown.
Not everyone who watches the Super Bowl wants to buy beer or eat chips, but odds are somone who visits a BMW enthusiasts site would want to buy BMW parts or see a new BMW or Mercedes ad, right? Or someone who visits a cooking site would want to see ads about pots and pans or cookware. Of course!
Marketing companies are starting to see the light and develop products that target ads based on the content of the site delivering the ad. One such company is Media Trust. Media Trust’s new product Advario allows publishers to specifically target campaigns based on content of a publisher’s site rather than a geographic or network blanket. The ads are specifically target by content therefore saving wasted advertiser’s money and saving the site user the hassle of instrusive pointless ads.

http://www.kensoftinc.com/blog/

10 Ad Networks Kick off UK Ad Exchange

Written on February 2nd 2007

AdECN has partnered up with 10 online, UK-based networks to create a consortium that hopes to revamp the process of buying and selling inventory within the industry.

Set up as a not-for-profit entiry, the UK branch of AdECN will provide its members with opportunities “…to buy and sell ad inventory for their advertiser and publisher clients on an automated and neutral exchange”, which AdECN hopes will result in advertisers having more transparency while spending less time filling out orders.

E-consultancy notes that AdECN’s CEO/founder Bill Urschel has been instrumental in the convergence of the partnership, getting the message across that traditional methods of communication such as faxes and telephones has put the industry at a snail’s pace without the use of automated exchanges.

John Cole, managing director of MediaRun, one of the consortium’s members, states, “The key to the AdECN exchange is its neutrality. Cole goes on to say, “This is the first time that we will have the opportunity to buy and sell display advertising in an efficient way. The present system is nowhere near efficient enough and attracts all sorts of middlemen. The closer an advertiser can get to the source, the better the results; this is the perfect system for eliminating chain-buying.”

According to E-consultancy’s 2007 Online Advertising Networks Buyer’s Guide, UK online ad networks now account for up to 25% of UK display advertising spend.

Additionally, the guide claims that the 40-plus online ad networks operating in the UK made an estimated £120 million (approximately $236 million USD) in revenue during 2006.

Advertising 3.0? Considering The Advertising Eco-system

By Joe Marchese
Some of you may notice that my attribution has changed. I can't say much about this right now, but will say that this entrepreneurial venture has influenced many of my Spins over the past couple of months -- and some, such as this week's, far more than others. When I can say more about this mysterious start-up here, I will. Hopefully the perspective of entrepreneur in the world of online brand advertising will prove at least entertaining, interesting and, once in a while, insightful. In the end there will be countless technologies, systems and business that will enable brand dollars to follow people's attention from outdoors to online; hopefully I am working on one of them ;-). For today I would like to discuss what I feel is the key to so-called "next generation" advertising.

After last week's Spin, a reader took exception to a statement I made: Building successful business models for tomorrow's advertising will mean first, and last, evaluating how to improve the entire eco-system you are attempting to enter.

The response implied that first, and last, advertising's goal is to increase sales. I can't imagine anyone disagrees with this. I certainly don't. But let me be a little clearer in what I was saying in this statement. While increasing sales is THE end, there are many means to this end. The goal of advertising will always be to increase sales, but the role of advertising has to evolve. Advertising is changing from the buying and selling of peoples' attention with only implied consent, to a system requiring explicit consent of the people. Advertising where people don't want advertising, or where it interrupts an eco-system (from outdoors to online), will increase sales marginally and for short periods of time while the market and technologies adapt to allow people to block those interruptions. This approach will result in constant battle between advertisers and consumers, one that in the end consumers will win. Sustainable business models throughout the media and advertising value chain will focus on how to seamlessly integrate, and even enhance, content with advertising (again, from outdoors to online). These will be sustainable; these will be the superstars.

What/who is included in the eco-system? In the simplest view, the eco-system includes the content surrounding the advertising, the advertisers themselves and, most importantly, the people (re: consumers, users, viewers). You can look at almost any place there might be advertising and find these components. But defining the components of the eco-system is the easy part. Building, placing and in some cases, even integrating, advertising that adds the necessary value to each component is the tricky part.

What are the goals of each component of the eco-system? For the advertisers, it's easy; increase sales and build brand equity. For the content surrounding the advertising, the minimum is not to disturb the content with advertising messaging; the Holy Grail is to actually enhance the content with the advertising messaging. For consumers, the goal is to receive only informationally and/or emotionally relevant advertising at the right point in time and space.

It may sound like a tall order, but as we all would agree, advertising that doesn't increase sales or brand equity is an obvious waste. The reality that we are dealing with in a world of TiVo, user-generated content and attention fragmentation is that an advertising method that can increase sales, but doesn't address the other components of the eco-system, will eventually be phased out by the people and/or content publishers. When this happens, the advertising certainly can't deliver any longer on its first goal of increasing sales. Since constantly reinventing business models for short-term success is inefficient, the solution it to create technologies and business models built specifically to address all elements of an advertising eco-system in the 21st century.

The solution is even more complicated than the problem. It requires blending the right brain and the left brain, blending creative and algorithms. It requires innovations in technology and levels of human interaction. It requires aspects of professional development and user-generated personalization. In the end, it requires finding the point where Madison Avenue can meet the people halfway, using the next generation of advertising technologies and philosophies.