Thursday 10 April 2008

At an event hosted by start up company, Pikum (run by entrepreneur, Sean Glass), I met Jure Cuhalev from the very cool new 'semantic' blogging tool, Zemanta. It recommends links on your blog, as you type - I'm fascinated by how it works, so will try it out for a while to see what links it recommends.

Online ad spend

So, Internet ad spend will outstrip TV by 2009, says the IAB in its report out this week. Not surprising, given the increase in time spent online over TV, and also the transparency of online as an advertising medium.

But this doesn’t herald a decline in TV advertising, just a shift in what we mean by it. As more and more people watch TV via the Internet (either streamed or downloaded), it is inevitable that the ad spend moves with it. This is potentially a marketer’s dream: a captive audience of viewers who have actively chosen to watch (rather than having it on in the background – or while they’re on Facebook on a laptop while in front of the TV). And you can track what works and what doesn’t. What will be more interesting, is to see how the payment models change, and how ‘pure’ brand advertising will fare.