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UK Online Ad Spending Bigger Than TV!

Big news out of London yesterday. A report from the UK IAB states that online ad spending accounted for 23.5% of all ad spending in the market vs. 21.9% for TV.  Earlier in the year Group M predicted that the UK would be the first major market to see online ad spending eclipse that of TV and, if the trend continues, it looks like they are going to be correct.  

Some other interesting stats coming out of the report: Search - at 59.8% - accounted for the lion's share of online ad spend with Classifieds coming in 2nd at 22% followed by Display advertising at 18.1%.  Display actually dropped by over 5%.  Guy Phillipson, President & CEO of the UK IAB, remained cautious around a boost in display advertising saying that there would be a rebound in 2011.  

Back here in the States I'm sure we'll start seeing predictions of when US online ad spending will overtake TV.  

  

Consumers Say NO To Online Tracking

Intriguing study conducted over the summer shows that web users do not want marketers to track their surfing behavior and serve up ads relevant to their interests.  Interesting to see how the "no" responses increase with age.  Web users seem to be a bit more comfortable with personalized news and discounts but it's still not a pretty picture.  This is a hot topic on Capitol Hill right now so it should be interesting to see if specific legislation is in our future.  Most publishers and online companies that rely on some kind of tracking to serve targeted ads and make money (and there are hundreds of them) have got to be concerned.  Stay tuned.

Overhyped Products?

Minyanville published an intriguing article yesterday about the most overhyped products in the land.  They extend from CPG products (New Coke) to sports arenas (New Yankee Stadium) to vehicles (Segway) to emirates (Dubai).  I trust there was great debate around the Top 10 in the halls of Minyanville in NYC. Great fodder for cocktail party conversation, too. 

Ads at the Gas Station

As my wife and I were driving home from NYC last night the gas light went on in the car alerting us that we were running low on petro.  I pulled into a gas station, swiped my credit card and began filling up the tank. Then I looked up to notice a bright light coming from above the pump and it was a TV (LCD screen) showing news and information interspersed with advertising.  Turns out the entire experience was created by PumpTop TV.  At first I thought "just what we need yet another place for me to be interrupted with advertising messages" and "who is going to stare at this screen while filling up their tank".  But there I was over 60 seconds later still pumping gas and still staring.  I checked out the PumpTopTV.com website and found out the company has installed over 12,600 screens across the country (mostly in major DMAs) and reaches 20 million consumer each month.  A partnership with competitor Outcast has helped, too.  Don't know how successful the company is yet but the opportunity to target consumers based on geo, demo, and day-part when they can't help but notice the product and engage with it could make for an interesting business model.  

Email still a powerhouse; Print continues to fade

Recent study from eMarketer shows that E-mail is still the channel most likely to see a boost in spending this year followed by Interactive and Search.  This says to me that DR advertising will still be king while we wait for brand advertisers to pour more money online.  On the flip side Print is the channel most likely to get cut followed by TV and Radio.  Less than 2% of respondents said they would cut budgets for E-Mail, Search or Interactive respectively.  I'd sure like to know who those marketers are.

New Ad Units From Linkstorm

Full Disclosure: I used to run sales for Linkstorm and closed the first paid deals for the company with marketers like E*TRADE, Sheraton, IBM and HBS.  I am pleased that their business continues to grow and dozens of new companies have chosen to use Linkstorm's ad technology/rich media solution to help improve the performance of their online ad campaigns.  I am especially excited to see Linkstorm-enabled ads running on the broker buttons of AOL Finance and NYT.com's home page. 

 

 

By simply rolling over the ad units for The Boys Are Back on NYT or ShareBuilder on AOL Finance a cascading menu(s) opens and the user is able to find just the right information they are looking for without ever leaving the page.  Congrats to my old friends at Linkstorm.  I look forward to hearing of more marketing and publisher partners in the near future.

TypePad For Journalists

I'm really proud of a project our company launched last week that speaks volumes about the power of blogs, community, the viral nature of our medium, and caring.  It's the TypePad For Journalist Program and gives recently laid-off journalists (or journalists who want to take control of their careers) a free TypePad account, promotion of their blog on Blogs.com (our blog portal), access to our services team, and acceptance into our advertising program (so the journalists can make a few bucks). 

The response to this program has been truly incredible.  We've received over 1400 blog mentions, 50 press mentions (NYT, LA Times, Wired, Yahoo!, etc.), 500 Twitter mentions and hundreds and hundreds of journalists applying to the program.  These writers have come from NYT, Newsweek, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Times of London and more.  Clearly this program has struck a very positive chord.

It makes me feel good that Six Apart is giving back to the community and helping people who have been negatively affected by the economic downturn.  I'm hoping we can expand the program to other industries that have been hit hard, too.  More to come.