The Globe and Mail reported today that online advertising in Canada broke the $1-billion mark for the first time in 2006, and is expected to grow another 32 per cent this year, according to a study to be released today.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, which represents advertisers, agencies and websites, said online advertising spending totalled $1.01-billion in 2006, up 80 per cent from $562-million in 2005. From a booklet available at their website, the Canadian Media Directors council puts all ad spending (2005) at 11.7 billion. A guesstimate total for 2006 would be around $12B or so, online advertising represents about 8.3% of the total.

Spending on online classifieds and directories showed the fastest growth, up 120 per cent to $273-million in 2006, according to the IAB. E-mail marketing grew 82 per cent to $20-million; search marketing grew 79 per cent to $353-million. And display advertising - the most mature online ad medium - grew 58 per cent to $364-million.

While a healthy Canadian economy has seen marketing budgets increase across the board, Internet advertising continues to show the greatest gains. Those findings are confirmed in a separate survey also being released today by the Institute of Communications and Advertising and Canada Post.

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Piper Jaffray's predictions for online ad spending keep going up, and are now expected to go beyond the $80 billion mark by 2011. Higher growth rates at the close of 2006 are one factor, but the research firm points to the people as the true driving force. As more consumers take the reins when it comes to controlling their media diets, and spend more time online and creating their own content, advertisers will continue to boost online budgets. Several prognostications are made in the firm's new "User Revolution" report, including the domination of video online, a Google dynasty, and the death of the portal.

In December, Piper Jaffray & Co.'s Internet ad revenue forecast for 2011 was at $78 billion, but today's report raises that estimate to $81.1 billion. "We have more confidence in the growth rates," of the Internet, said Safa Rashtchy, managing director, senior Internet analyst for the company. According to Rashtchy, when measuring Internet ad spending, the firm includes search advertising, display ads, text links, video advertising and e-mail, but excludes mobile and iTV.

The explosion of niche content online and the related segmentation of audiences will continue to drive online ad spending by small advertisers that otherwise cannot afford mass market vehicles. This "will actually give more power to small advertisers," Rashtchy said. Still, big brand advertisers will continue to shell out the lion's share of online ad dollars, he continued, noting consumer packaged goods and automotive advertisers will maintain their big spender positions. "Over time, there won't be much difference between the Web and the rest of the media channels….It will reflect overall advertising dollars out there," he added.

Source link:  http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625088

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Qumana has been selected as one of the select IT companies in British Columbia on Rocket Builders ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list for 2007

Compiled by the Canadian-based firm Rocket Builders, the ‘2007 Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ named a small select group of  British Columbia technology companies gaining traction within the information technology trends that contribute to faster growth than the IT sector as a whole. These companies represent high-potential growth in revenue and profile and that are beginning to be of real interest to potential partners and venture capitalists. 

“Companies that make our annual ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list come from a variety of technology businesses and industry sectors across British Columbia, and Rocket Builders has a credible track record of identifying these emerging companies,” says Geoffrey Hansen, managing partner at Rocket Builders.  "Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list."

About the Ready to Rocket 25 and the Ones To Watch

Each year, based on analysis of trends that will drive growth in the information technology sector, Rocket Builders identifies twenty-five (25) private companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the trends for growth. This selection methodology has been an accurate predictor of growth with "Ready to Rocket" companies exceeding the industry growth rate. Also, many of these companies raise investment capital and each year many of the profiled "Ready to Rocket' companies are acquired. To be eligible for selection to the "Ready to Rocket 25" list, companies must be a nominated Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation, and have a commercialized product on the market that has customers and is generating ongoing revenue.

Additionally, Rocket Builders also identifies early-stage high-potential companies it places on its 'Ones To Watch' list

"Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list."
Visit: www.readytorocket.com

About Rocket Builders
Rocket Builders is a market strategy and consulting firm focused on helping technology companies to capitalize on market opportunities. Since 2000, we have been engaged in market research, market planning, business development initiatives, strategic selling, and product launches for over 100 organizations. As a service to the local community, each year Rocket Builders shares its insight on market trends to showcase the most promising information technology companies in British Columbia through its “Ready to Rocket” event.
Visit: www.rocketbuilders.com

Tags: Rocket Builders, Ready To Rocket, Ones To Watch

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With energy stocks and commodities possibly losing steam, investors are searching for the next investment group that may catch fire. And right now, the consensus seems to have settled on technology — the one sector that hasn’t experienced a sustained rally since the bear market of 2000. Wall Street analysts predict that tech profits will grow 17 percent in 2007, according to Thomson Financial. By contrast, earnings among all companies in the S.& P. 500 are expected to jump by a much more modest 7.9 percent, on average.

This month, a survey by Merrill Lynch showed that 41 percent of domestic fund managers are overweighting tech — meaning that they are investing a greater portion of their portfolios in the sector than they normally do. In November, only 23 percent of fund managers were placing larger-than-usual bets on the group. In fact, investment managers are more bullish on tech than they are on any other segment of the economy, according to a survey by the Russell Investment Group.

Read more here.

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Music sites across the Web see daily peaks of over half a million visitors per minute. In North America and Europe traffic is highest mid-week while the greatest number of visitors happens later in the week. Sunday is the slowest day for visitors to these sites globally.

In a survey conducted by Akamai of 200 people aged 19 to 68, 90 percent of respondents said they buy at least one song per week. The bulk of respondents spend less than $5 per week on music purchases; 76 percent spend between $1 and $5 per week; 14 percent spend $5 to $10 a week; and 9 percent spend $10 to $20 each week. Eighty-two percent of respondents favor a pay-per-download model; 9 percent like an ad-sponsored model; and 9 percent opt for a subscription model for music downloads.

Data from Akamai's Net Usage Index for Digital Music" report traffic to music category sites worldwide via ClickZ Stats.

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Advertising spending for the first three quarters of 2006 rose 5.1% over the same period last year, due to ad spending increases across many major media, according to preliminary figures released today by Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the advertising intelligence service of Nielsen Media Research.

Online spending, however, increased an impressive 49.2% over the two time periods. “As consumers continue to make the Web a part of their daily media mix, so do advertisers,” said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Some of the segments that represent the largest share of advertising online - including financial services, retail and telecommunications - also experienced the greatest increase in ad spending, year over year.”

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Vancouver, BC - December 12, 2006 – Qumana Software Inc. has recently released a version Q-Ads as a plug-in for Microsoft LiveWriter, the new blogging tool offered by the Redmond, WA software giant.

“Qumana is thrilled to be offering the industry’s easiest ad insertion tool to this important blogging community,” said Fred Fabro, CEO of Qumana. “This is part of our continuing commitment to making blogging easier and more rewarding” said Fabro.

Q-Ads provides bloggers an easy-to-use and effective alternative to the dominant online advertising services, and offers them significant payout levels by grouping together in the categorization menus those keywords that are known to perform well.

A quick download and install of the Q-Ads plug-in, which works with all major blogging platforms, allows bloggers using LiveWriter to choose categorized keywords which inserts relevant advertising into their blog posts close to their readers’ attention.

About Qumana

Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides content providers and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana’s mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple.

For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/

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San Francisco and Vancouver (Nov. 29, 2006) -- Qumana Software Inc today announced availability of the Q-Ads tools (http://tools.typepad.com/get/qads) and the popular Qumana offline blog editor (http://tools.typepad.com/get/qumana) for users of the TypePad blogging platform. Users of Six Apart's popular hosted blogging service can now quickly and easily insert keyword-based ads directly into their blog posts, whether they use the Qumana editor or not.

"Qumana is thrilled to be offering the industry's easiest ad insertion tool to this important blogging community," said Fred Fabro, CEO of Qumana. "Q-Ads puts TypePad bloggers at the center of the explosive growth taking place in online advertising," said Fabro.

"TypePad bloggers deserve creative and powerful ways to earn money from their blogs. Qumana offers bloggers a unique approach, and we're happy to introduce their tools to our customers." said Michael Sippey, VP & GM of TypePad at Six Apart.

"With Q-Ads TypePad bloggers can choose which keywords best represent the editorial message of the blog post and then with one click pull an ad from our network that best relates to that content," added Fabro. "The result is a matching of TypePad bloggers' content to an ad message, which can give the ad message greater relevance to blog readers. Greater relevance means higher click-throughs and happier advertisers," said Fabro.

Qumana's Q-Ads tool is a browser extension that works as an Internet Explorer plugin or Firefox extension that enables users to "pull and place" text-based advertising based on the keywords they enter. The Q-Ads Tool works with all major blogging platforms, including TypePad. There is also a Q-Ads plug-in for Windows LiveWriter.

Qumana also offers Typepad users the leading off-line blog editor in the blogosphere. Qumana allows bloggers to create media-rich blog posts in a familiar WYSIWYG interface and with simple button clicks insert the keyword-based ads, Technorati tags, and multimedia (e.g. YouTube videos) through the innovative Insert HTML button.

The insert ad interface is designed to allow users to enter the keyword of their choice and then customize the size and colour of the ad before inserting it into their post.


About Qumana
Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides content providers and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana's mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple. For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/

About Six Apart, Ltd.
Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services that change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and corporations connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded in 2002 by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart has grown into a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco, CA, and offices in Europe and Japan. The company continues to lead in the blogging and social media industry with the Movable Type publishing platform, the TypePad hosted blogging service LiveJournal, an online community organized around personal journals, and Vox, a free personal blogging service for friends and family. For more information, visit http://www.sixapart.com/



For more info: Fred Fabro - CEO and President, Qumana Software Inc.
e: fred AT qumana.com   Tel: 604.837.0400

Tags: Qumana, Q-Ads, Typepad, online advertising, blog advertising, marketing widgets

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If there was any doubt about the power of video ads online, well this report from eMarketer should dispel them quickly.

If you have any lingering doubt that online advertising in the form of video is seeing explosive growth, consider this: Spending on online video advertising will reach $410 million this year, 82% more than was spent in 2005. By 2010, Internet video advertising will be a $3 billion business, according to eMarketer's latest projections.

There is a caveat that this is still a small piece of the pie, but given how powerful video is for advertising (e.g. TV), as broadband connections get faster, this part of ad market can only grow.

Tags: online video ads

The big news of the day is that Google has worked out a deal with major newspaper publishers to let online advertisers bid on ad space in newspapers.

Is this revolutionary or just smart business?  Here is a quote from the NYT article (which is included in the group selling space:

Google’s plan will give the publishing business a high-tech twist: the company will expand its computer system, which already auctions off advertisements on millions of Web sites, to take bids for newspaper ads as well. Hoping to reach out to a new crop of customers, such as small businesses and online retailers, many of the largest newspaper companies, including Gannett, the Tribune Company, The New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company and Hearst, have agreed to try the system in a three-month test set to start later this month.

For Google, the test is an important step to the company’s audacious long-term goal: to build a single computer system through which advertisers can promote their products in any medium. For the newspaper industry, reeling from the loss of both readers and advertisers, this new system offers a curious bargain: the publishers can get much-needed revenue but in doing so they may well make Google — which is already the biggest seller of online advertising — even stronger.

Tom Phillips, who runs Google’s print operations, said the company was attracted by the $48 billion spent every year in the United States on newspaper advertising. Google, nonetheless, is trying to position itself as a friend of the newspapers.

Seems to me what Google is doing is leveraging the fact that it has tons of advertisers in its Adwords program and, contrary to popular belief, newspapers aren't dead.

Tags: Google, newspaper advertising

Jim Meskauskas on iMedia Connection contends in an article this week that ads can be too relevant to the point where they don't work.

What consumers want is information, not advertising. This is something that Google seems to have figured out, likely by accident. Search isn't successful only because it is relevant. It is successful because it offers information. That information just happens to come to us from an advertiser.

So then are blogs with ads where you get some information about the product or service coupled with an ad better or too relevant?

Tags: online advertising

I use Google all the time.  From GMail to Google Desktop Search, I use a lot of the tools.  But we all know that Google's revenue comes from advertising (Adwords).  What I we didn't really comprehend until this week is that Google holds a lot of the cards in this.

Of the total $16 billion expected take for US online advertising, Google is projected to bring in $4 billion for itself, 65 percent more than last year. At $2.86 billion for Yahoo - not exactly chump change - the 1.4 percent decline in market share (lost almost entirely to Google) is telling.

Last year, advertisers spent an average $71.51 per user, a number expected to increase to $88.28 this year, according to eMarketer's estimates, and to nearly $100 per user by 2010. That pushes the expected spend to $21 billion in 2008, and to over $25 billion in 2010. This is all good news for Google, if its trend of dominance continues.

Looks like the smart money is on Google.  And the smart players will find ways to leverage Google's Adwords/Adsense dominance.

Tags: Google, online advertising, Adwords, Adsense

I've noted the lack of buzz about Yahoo recently, now the NYT is getting into the discussion.

“It’s hard to figure out what they want to be when they grow up, even though they are grown up now,” said Tim Hanlon, a senior vice president of Denuo, the media futures consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe. “Are they a content company? Are they a services company? Or are they a portal to other things? You ask three people and you may get three different answers.”

Current and former Yahoo employees say the company has been bogged down by bureaucracy and internal squabbling. For example, the media group, which handles video programming, and the search group, which has a system to find videos on the Web, both wanted to offer a service for users to upload their own video clips. The search group won, but the delay allowed YouTube, a start-up, to dominate the market.

“When you become Yahoo’s size, you become a little complacent, a little fat and happy,” said Youssef H. Squali, an analyst for Jefferies & Company.

From the sounds of it, Yahoo picked up Flickr and del.icio.us and thought they would bolster Yahoo 360 (which was sadly a failure).  What's next?  With the Panama ad system launched ahead of schedule, I think Yahoo is getting ready to make a splash.  The question is, where do they go and who do they target?

Tags: Yahoo

The Wharton School of Business has an article series on Social Media going.  One of the big questions they are looking into is how to value social media:

While the social networking sites vary considerably, each relies heavily on content provided by users who can post personal profiles and build networks among friends and others with shared interests. For the most part, these users have free access and the sites are funded with advertising revenue. To lure advertisers, young sites typically offer deep discounts that make profitability elusive, and it is unclear when they will be able to push ad rates higher, if ever.

Is the value in the content there or the eyeballs drawn to the content, or both?  And do current CPM and CPC models cover them?  Open questions for the moment.  The one people aren't asking though is how the people who use social media can leverage their collective power.  The answer is Qumana.

Tags: social media, online advertising

Disclaimer first: I am a blogger for B5media so my excitement for this is both personal and professional.

Yesterday we got word at b5 media, okay I knew well beforehand, but that's insider stuff, that JLA Venture Partners and Brightspark have closed a VC financing deal with B5media to the tune of $2 million.

Personally, I see this as an affirmation that the blog network business model has real legs.  Build niche blogs on hot topics, sell ad space, make money.  I am still gathering my thoughts on it all.  But my friends, Rick and Shel have chimed in and Darren of B5 pulls those two together nicely.  On reflection, the real story isn't about blog networks, but really the power of niche content and online advertising.  People are zooming to niche content like never before and advertisers see that and are responding.  I suspect that B5 is going to pursue more deals like they have with Fox TV to really accelerate this whole process.

And, yes, we're all very excited at B5.

Tags: b5 media, b5media, vc funding, JLA Venture Partners, Brightspark

Just out from eMarketer and the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), Internet ad revenues topped $4 billion in Q2 of 2006 for a total of almost $8 billion for the first half of the year.  That's a 37% increase over 2005 and the Q1 vs Q2 2006 jump is a healthy 5.5%. From eMarketer:

According to the latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), US online advertising revenues for the first six months of 2006 were approximately $7.9 billion, a 37% increase over the first half of 2005.

In addition, Internet advertising revenues totaled nearly $4.1 billion for the second quarter of 2006, representing a 36% increase over the same period in 2005 and a 5.5% increase over the first quarter of 2006.

Take away: Internet advertising is not only here to stay, but an increasingly important force in any companies overall advertising mix.

Hat tip to Business Opportunities Weblog.

Tags: online advertising

Techmeme is one of those sites where those in the know go to stay in the know.  It is highly trafficked and gives techies a bird's eye view of what is going on (in the tech world).  The question has been, of course, how with they make money?  The answer is here.  Taking a page from Techcrunch, but going a step further, Techmeme now has sponsors on its right-hand column, but ... this isn't just the standard logo spot for cash deal, the sponsors get the latest item from their blog's RSS feed posted with the logo.

This is getting a good amount of buzz on the blogosphere (as reflected on Techmeme itself), Jeff Jarvis, Mark Evans, and Mathew Ingram have all commented, and spoken favourably, of this new plan.

This idea takes the typical "place your logo on our site and get visibility" idea to the next level.  Now, readers get to see what the sponsor is talking about and Techmeme then gets additional content to boot.

Other applications?  Using other widget services bloggers could do something very similar, the question will be to see how this does after the first 3-month contracts are up.

Tags: Techmeme, advertising, sponsorships

According to ClickZ ad networks like Adbrite, BlogAds, and others have been growing so fast to meet demand, that they are actually putting the brakes on things to catch up.  Interesting thing, though, while all these ad networks are heating up, they all still rely on users knowing how to code to make the ads work.

On the other hand, Qumana has taken the approach that advertising on your blog should be painless.  Hence one-click ads in Qumana and our new Q-Ads tool.  The only tool that allows MySpace users to place ads in their blogs.

Seems like the time is right for bloggers to start taking control of their advertising.

Tags: Qumana, Q-Ads, MySpace

Recently one could say Ya-who?  Yahoo has noticeably dropped off the map of late, well at least as far was our insular Web 2.0 world goes.  Those days are over.  With a series of media blitzes, including giving people free coffee to make Yahoo their homepage, Yahoo is trying to make a brand comeback.

What's the skinny here?  Yahoo is feeling pressure from the other big brands like Microsoft and Google.  Left out of the party, they need a push to get things rolling.  Things like a rumoured purchase of the web-giant Facebook.  What's next?  I'm thinking Yahoo should be rolling out new things anytime now.  Just a gut feeling.

Tags: Yahoo

MySpace and YouTube are two of the most trafficked sites on the Net.  So it goes without saying that big biz is going to start looking at these communities.  But ... Yes, but.  But, the watchword is caution.  Not because there is risk in these communities becoming passe in a New York minute, because the users in these community sense marketing ploys like sharks sniff out blood in the water.  Actually come to think of it the shark analogy isn't a bad one.  You can swim with sharks, but if you get into a feeding frenzy, well your pretty much done for.

As big business gets approaches social media, they are using some tried and true techniques, watch, observe, make initial advances, then after learning the ropes, get into the community.  While these spaces represent huge opportunities, they need to be approached with the understanding that they have social rules and expectations.

Tags: social media

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  I was floored too.  Twenty-one percent.  Wow.  That is a tremendous vote of confidence for online advertising.  The article from eMarketer goes into details that are enlightening about both the strengths and weaknesses in the online ad format.  I tell you though, 21% is still a breakthrough number.  Now the question is, when will Europe and North America catch up?

Tags: online advertising

Google and eBay announced a deal (with no sum disclosed) where Google will serve ads on eBay's sites ... especially the international ones (non-US eBays are growing twice as fast as the U.S.). Paul Kedrosky has some good commentary on the deal, which I quote from below:

• Ebay is worried about having no ad network when its competitors do. By farming out the U.S. business to Yahoo and the non-U.S. business to Google it trying hard to protect itself, which may work in the short term, but is a dubious longer-run strategy.
• Short-term, I'm surprised that this will not affect eBay's 2006 or 2007 results. The upshot seems to be that eBay will only start testing the arrangement in early 2007, so that puts 2006 materiality out of reach, leaving 2007 still possible. So why no impact there? eBay is clearly planning to go slow, perhaps keeping its options open with respect to ad networks.
• If needed, this is a lovely example of how every software service is also a media service. While it took eBay too long to get over itself, any high-traffic application that does not also run ads is passing up material revenues, and its shareholders should take it to task.

What I haven't seen commented on is the growing advertising power of non-U.S. surfers.  Yahoo! is missing the boat on this with YPN for U.S. people only.  MSN?  Don't know, but they might lack the international inventory to make it work.  Google clearly does see the opportunity here and is taking advantage of it, big time.

Tags: online advertising, Google, eBay, Yahoo, YPN

YouTube launched their new channels this week (why they launched with Paris Hilton is beyond me).  Steve Rubel and Liz Gannes of GigaOm commented on the fact that the Paris video was an ad (for channels) and there was an ad in there too!

Hmm, I'm thinking this isn't going to work out so well.

You?

Tags: YouTube, Onine advertising

David Smith's article this week in iMedia Connection asks a question that most advertisers and marketers have on their minds, "With online advertising becoming so popular, won't we run out of space?".  Beyond raising prices (great for those of us with ads on our blogs), David makes this extremely important point:

Next, our technology is just now being deployed to many more places. This provides more inventory to sell. Third screens (mobile) are just the start of it. There are those who would have us believe that we will have car screens (part of a navigation system) and I cannot see why not. The marriage of a web browser, local search and an appetite make this a slam dunk. Any doubt that we will eventually get that kitchen screen we've always talked about? I'd prefer mine embedded into the kitchen counter, please, not on the fridge. I'm sure that there are many more possibilities being developed.

We have only just begun to tap into all the places ads can be placed without annoying people (or getting to ad saturation).  Blogs are only in the last year beginning to be tapped into.  Then there is technology.  Ad serving technology hasn't moved very far ahead from it's early days.  Yes we have better contextual advertising, but it's just better not great.  So as David points out targeting is the next phase:

Another area just starting to take off is targeting. Whether it be behavioral (tracking a person), relevancy (finding the right bucket of impressions), or some new method, be assured that there will be lots of ways to sell you impressions against the right people outside of the obvious, contextual areas.

Before you start worrying about personal privacy, targeting merely is better fitting an ad to the content and the readership.  If many of the readers click on a certain type of ad on a site, don't you think more of those ads should be served?  Makes sense to me.

Really we're only in the beginning of the growth cycle for online advertising.  The cool stuff is yet to come.

Tags: online advertising

From the NYT this morning, Microsoft and Facebook have made a deal for Microsoft to be the exclusive provider of advertising on Facebook for the next three years (Microsoft to Provide and Sell Ads on Facebook, the Web Site - New York Times).

Great, but what does this mean?  This is a powerful endorsement of social networking sites (include MySpace in your thinking here) as a place for advertisers to reach consumers.  It highlights how important social networking sites have become to the collective online experience.

The future?  If big companies have realized the value in social networking, when do you think the social networkers themselves will start to figure this out?  That is the bigger question and the race will be on to provide them with tools to do just that.

tags: social networking, online advertising, Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft

With all the discussion of how popular MySpace is, you might forget that there are lots of other social media, user generated content sites out there.  From eMarketer this morning comes a little piece giving a little insight into the explosive growth of these sites (and their brands).

It shouldn't really be a surprise that these sites have exploded seemingly overnight.  They are fun, easy, and with huge adoption of broadband Internet, fast.

The question, though, is how will users be able to earn a little coin from this?  The service owners get subscription fees or big deals from folks like Google, but what about the people who actually make the sites worthwhile?  I know these models are coming, and soon.  Then, I think things will get really interesting.

Tags: MySpace, social media, user generated content

From an eMarketer article this morning come a hint of what is to come for the online video market.  The article is packed with charts and I suggest that you visit there and give them all a look.  But let's start with the opening paragraph:

A recent report from technology research firm In-Stat indicates that the potential market for online video content worldwide will grow from 13 million households in 2005 to 131 million households in 2010. One of the drivers behind this growth is the widespread adoption of broadband, and In-stat predicts that by 2010 there will be 413 million broadband households worldwide, up from 194 million in 2005

Two factors are at work here, and neither should come as a surprise to you.  First is the overwhelming adoption of broadband in North America (the U.S. especially).  Second has been sites like YouTube which have made video uploading and sharing a new cult phenomenon.  What does this mean for the long term?  Basically that as online video increases in popularity, advertisers will start jumping on board to leverage it.

With the announcement of the deal between Google and Viacom earlier this week we've seen the first salvo.  Next?  I'm betting on ad-supported versions of other programs, some maybe even downloadable.  I would love, for example, to be able to download a show that I missed to watch on my laptop.  And I would be willing to watch an ad at the beginning, middle, and end to have this ability.

Another ... watch and see ... it's going to be exciting for sure.

Tags: online video, MySpace

I caught on Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion this morning that Ford has purchased space on over 400 blogs through the blog ad network BlogAds.  Big new?  Umm, yeah.  When a major company realizes that blogs have become the de facto influencers of many people's opinions and are capturing more and more of our attention, well that is good, big, exciting news for the whole online ad sphere.

Tags: Ford, online advertisng

Via Reuters, Google and Viacom have agreed to have Google distribute Viacom videos through Google's Adsense network.  A first for both companies, this is getting into a whole new territory of online media distribution.  This is makes the web very similar to TV now, watch a video and see ads.

While I haven't seen this out in the wild yet, I have to wonder if site owners and bloggers will be able to offer their readers videos on their site as content and reap a portion of the Adsense pie.  If so, we've now moved from the Web as personal printing press to personal radio station (podcasting) to personal TV station.  While video blogging (vlogging) is interesting and many people are doing it, vlogging is still very niche.  Most people prefer to link to or embed videos (hence the explosive popularity of YouTube), now imagine if you could offer videos of things you like and make money from that.  That is revolutionary.  Watch for TrisTV coming soon to a screen near you.

Tags: Google, Viacom, MTV, Adsense, vlogging, personal tv station

There's a bold question.  The easy answer is, no of course not, however according to AdAge, TV is facing huge challenges ahead.  The fact is that our attention is fragmented.  We're spending lots of time online, we're spending less time reading print media, and we're sure as heck spending less time watching TV.  The TV we now watch is commonly, in the U.S. mostly, "Tivo-ed" and commercials are skipped (boy I wish I could do that during Hell's Kitchen, alas no Tivo or DVR in my house).  For analysis let's start with the opening of the article:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A study is about to give Madison Avenue a fresh pummeling: McKinsey & Co. is telling a host of major marketers that by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990.

That alone will make some ad execs and marketing folks spew coffee (or latte or tea) all over the screen.  The conventional wisdom is that if an ad starts to become less effective you have to spend more to hammer more ads in our faces.  And yet, we're all pretty sick of ads on TV, so that probably isn't a good idea.  Now let's skip to their discussion about online advertising:

The answer is not quite -- yet, at least. The Catch-22 is a "chaos scenario" that smart marketers have read about in these pages: a dearth of online-ad supply and the web's generally fragmented nature will keep TV in booming business for the next several years.

"Should everybody shift 30% of their dollars to the web?" asked Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, senior practice knowledge specialist in McKinsey's San Francisco office. "No. There wouldn't be room today if everybody wanted to shift online. Last year [online media] was $12.5 billion, by end of 2007 digital advertising will be $18 to $25 billion. ... So we're seeing a lot of growth, but if you want to match up share of attention and share of dollars it couldn't happen for that reason." The TV ad industry is a $68 billion one.

Here's the online real estate quandary again.  The pool is too small for everyone to jump in right now and get wet.  Not to mention we really need some new models for adverting online to really get things rocking.  Will the Google–MySpace deal help?  Maybe.  Good Morning Silicon Valley isn't too sure.  Bottom line: these are early days.  The web is only 15 years old (happy belated birthday) and the whole idea of mass advertising online is really just a toddler (terrible twos?), so I think the smart thing is to recognize that online advertising is going to be a force to be reckoned with and that this force is changing and shifting as we watch it (a little quantum physics maybe?).  So, stay tuned.  2006 and 2007 are going to get really interesting.

Tags: online advertising, TV advertising

Well, a lot.  Subtle, eh?  In all seriousness this is big news for Google, Fox, MySpace, and online advertising as a whole.  Commentary on this news has been fast and furious (Mark, Jeff, Techcrunch) on this topic.  What really drew my attention in all the commentary (there was a lot of "wow this is big") was this paragraph that Jeff highlighted in his post:

The agreement calls for Google to power web, vertical and site specific search for MySpace.com and the majority of Fox Interactive Media properties. Google will be the exclusive provider of text-based advertising and keyword targeted ads through its AdSense program, for inventory on Fox Interactive Media’s network. Google will also have a right of first refusal on display advertising sold through third parties on Fox Interactive Media’s network.

Having Google power search for MySpace is cool, and users will like it I'm sure, but what will start to shake things up is Adsense as the exclusive provider of text ads.  Why?  Because Google needs more space for ads.  Google's search, while the de facto search engine we turn to online, needs more places for ads to keep selling ads and demanding top dollar for placement.  MySpace is prime real estate.  Will the Adsense ads work within people's spaces?  Probably not.  Adsense doesn't do so well there and that's okay.  Adsense does really well in search results which is what Google is now providing.  With this huge increase in potential real estate and the fact that the audience is one of the most highly sought after and consumerized demographics, well you can see where this is going.

Challenges?  There might be some backlash against having lots of ads around MySpace (they've had this issue before), unless MySpace users can start earning their own money from placing ads within their spaces.  Ah, that will be something.

Update: After I published this post, Good Morning Silicon Valley, true to its snarky self, published a bit of a contrarian point of view to my assessment that Google is tapping into a gold mine of eyeballs and clickers.  They certainly have a good point, I counter back with good ads and branding-oriented ads will likely do well.

Tags: MySpace, Fox Interactive, Google, online advertising, Adsense

Mark Evans wrote something yesterday that got me thinking.  Now that AOL is offering AOL e-mail free, but with advertising, and Google, MSN, and Yahoo get a lot of the ad pie, he's wondering is there enough money to go around.  An interesting question.  Let's add to this a little tidbit from ZDNet:

59% of women agreed with the statement "Women are much more tech savvy than they give themselves credit for." Among the men, just 38% agreed. 35% of women agreed that "most of the time people rely on me for technology help," vs. 54% of men.

So, people are shopping online.  Online ad spend continues to grow, will there be enough to go around?  Yes, I think so.  The key is that advertisers are going to start getting more creative and savvy.  The standard search-engine ads are good, but they are reaching a saturation point.  I think the key for money is going to be expanding the available real estate into areas that the big boys can't control.

That's going to open the market and start tipping the scales and advantage towards smaller advertisers who can't outbid larger players.

Tags: online advertising

Canada's own (okay he, like me, is an American ex-pat) Rick Segal of JLA Ventures sat down (?) with Shel Israel the interview is over at Naked Conversations.

I've had several opportunities to chat with and listen to Rick recently (I'm still blown away that he knew who I was when I met him face-to-face for the first time at Mesh).  He's a sharp guy and his "30 minutes talk with me. no harm, no foul" policy is a great way to get some great feedback on your idea.

Of course, Rick's sense of humor comes through loud and clear.  Great read.

Tags: Rick Segal,, Naked Conversations, JLA Ventures, Venture capital, VC, Shel Israel

Amid the outcry from Adwords advertisers, Google has unveiled some new tools to help control click fraud, according to BusinessWeek.  After reading the announcement, I think this is an important step forward, but ... But a lot of the burden is falling on advertisers to audit the data and look for suspicious activity and block clicks.  Given how busy people are, I think Google needs to also beef up its automatic measures as well.  I'm sure that they will take the data that Adwords users are passing them and help to build better and better filters.

Tags: online advertising, Adwords, Google, click fraud

According to eMarketer this morning more parents (they say just moms, but let's be fair here) are doing their back-to-school shopping online.  Great for online retailers, what about advertisers?  Advertisers are starting to react to this trend, but surely not enough.

What would I do?  I would work with an online ad network to target blogs and related sites that fit the demographic of shoppers and pay a premium for short-term ads.  Ads with discounts, coupons, special deals.  Think about it this way.  If you're a mom reading your favourite mommy-blogger (and lots of moms do this, btw), and there is an ad ... special for readers, free shipping and 25% off your order over x.  Hmm, think they'd click?

What's missing here is the ad network part.  At this moment ad networks, generally, don't have detailed information like that.  Nor do they have target lists to contact big advertisers.  Might be too late for this year, but I suspect next year is going to be a whole new ball game.

Tags: online advertising, back to school shopping, new advertising tactics

Qumana Software  Inc.
330-1639 West 2nd Ave
Vancouver, BC V6J 1H3
Tel: 604.837.0400
Internet:  http://www.qumana.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

QUMANA REACHES GLOBALLY WITH
MULTI-LINGUAL BLOG EDITOR

Qumana Software releases blog editor in French, Spanish & Dutch 

VANCOUVER, B.C. - July 24, 2006 - Qumana Software Inc. (“Qumana”) today launches its blog publishing tool, Qumana, in French, Spanish and Dutch versions. These languages mark the first steps to make Qumana a universal tool for bloggers around the globe.

Qumana is a free desktop publishing tool for PC & Mac used to publish to one or more weblogs. Qumana makes writing to blogs as easy as typing an email, with features such as spell check and WYSIWYG image alignment that take the complication out of this new blog technology. The first release of Qumana was in February of 2006, and since then has been downloaded by tens of thousands of bloggers around the world. The increased demand for Qumana has encouraged the release of the first non-English versions: French, Spanish & Dutch, with more versions on the way.

Fred Fabro, CEO of Qumana Software, notes that “many software providers tend to focus only on the English-speaking market. We think every person who has a voice on the Internet should have access to the tools to make communication easier.” Fred continues, “We built Qumana for every blogger, and will be continuing these translations to ensure every blogger can use Qumana.”

About Qumana

Qumana Software, Inc. (www.qumana.com) is a leading developer of tools and services for bloggers. Qumana's industry recognized tools include: Qumana, a blog editor for online publishing; Lektora, an RSS Reader; and Q Ads, an advertising network for bloggers integrated into the Qumana tool. Qumana  develops tools for every blogger: PC & Mac, experienced & novice, and multi-lingual. Qumana  is headquartered in Vancouver, BC.

Contact:
Arieanna Schweber
Qumana Software Inc.
604.782.2417
arieanna@qumana.com

Click fraud is held up as the boogeyman of CPC (cost per click) / PPC (pay per click) advertising.  Today eMarketer highlights some recent reports on both refunds and reductions in ad spending (because of click fraud).  While click fraud is undoubtedly a problem, is there another side we're forgetting?

"Outsell's research can be seen another way," said David Hallerman, an eMarketer Senior Analyst. "While click fraud is wasted ad spending, how is that waste essentially different than ad dollars spent on TV where the viewer simply walks away in the commercial break? Since the majority of paid search still works, many marketers already factor in such underperforming advertising when they calculate how much to bid and their overall budgets."

As worrisome as click fraud is for the online advertising industry, the biggest problem may be that the search engines are not addressing the problem — often not even acknowledging it.

Let's not forget that with most other forms of advertising there is an assumed rate of loss.  Ads that are ignored, the number of people who use commercials to grab a snack or channel surf, these are guesstimates.  The difference with online advertising is the fact that you can track the number of times an ad is seen versus the number of times it has been clicked, data once thought impossible to get.  Don't forget as well, online advertising is still in its infancy.  When was the last time you saw a totally new ad format on TV or in a magazine?  Maybe the infomercial, but I can't think of many others in recent memory.  Online we started with banners (CPM advertising), then CPC, then animated banners, now we have those plus Flash-based banners, video banners, even multi-media interactive banners (and those "knock out the boxer for a free iPod" aren't what I'm thinking about) like Chitika's e-minimalls.

Click fraud is a problem, but it's also only a small bump in the road.  Will newer models come up (like MyMindshare) to fix the problem?  Certainly.  There will always be fraud, but there will also be clever people working to reduce the level of fraud to just background noise.

Tags: online advertising, click fraud, CPC, PPC

An article earlier this week on eMarketer brought good news to the online advertising industry.  Previously online ad spending this year was expected to grow by a respectable 10% over 2005.  That was good news to the online ad world.  Now the we're getting updated estimates from Universal McCann for 2006 and the estimate is a projected 25% growth in 2006.  The intro into David Hallerman's article sets the tone well:

When Universal McCann announced its latest 2006 ad spending projections at the end of June, two revisions from the firm's December 2005 estimates stood out. While US total media spending in 2005 increased by only 2.8% (in contrast to the earlier 4.6% figure), Internet ad spending in 2006 is now expected to soar by 25% (in contrast to the previous 10% prediction).

David, though, points out that the Universal McCann estimates don't really account for the explosive growth in paid search ads (the ads you see when you search Google or Yahoo).  Given that Yahoo reported that in Q1