-By Terry Van Horne
Today I am making my first post as desme Online Marketing Manager. Enam has given me pretty much a free hand to blog about what's on my mind. One of my responsibilities is developing search strategy for desme and our clients so you'll find that I will often be posting about the changing search engine marketing environment and industry. You'll see some posts on the economy, the stock market (my 2nd passion after marketing) and web technology. One of the main reasons for choosing to join the desme team was it's position as an early adopter of web technologies.
I have read quite a few articles making predictions about the SEM industry for 2008. There has been a lot of discussion about the Google purchase of DoubleClick as you will see by my predictions below I'm not a big believer that Google can do any better than anyone that has preceded it in the display advertising biz. My predictions on display advertising are based on my beliefs that no amount of targeting can change user behaviour. Users scan pages and IMO, images are not what they are scanning the page for.
My Predictions for 2008
Yahoo! is sold after the stock declines significantly
Display ad failures by Googles' new Double Click addition will lead Wall Street to push Yahoo! down to $5 (which would be a call I made in August of last year based on my feelings about Yahoo! technology). Yahoo! has a lot of intellectual property and Internet real estate that is either 2nd or third tier, under monetized or under utilized or a combination of all these with the added problem of they always pay too much for acquisitions.
Display ads are being hyped at a time when the market is just not going to be able to absorb all the inventory. The absolute worst spend I've made in 30 years of buying advertising was display advertising on the Google Content Network. 10's of Thousands of displays resulting in a handful of clicks which were likely all invalid. A nice branding exercise but... when ad budgets come under stress display ads will be the first to go and that is what drives revenue at Yahoo!.
In a word Panama is a joke and shouldn't even be included in a sentence with AdWords. About all AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search have in common is they both use bids in the price calculation. Even that, Google does to the Nth degree better. After using Panama once my first instinct was to short the stock! I charge a flat fee to manage Yahoo! accounts for a reason. They do not generate enough income to work on it any other way.
Display Advertising Highly Touted but will be a huge failure
Display ads will be hyped to extreme and fail miserably when everyone remembers that "Banner Blindness" put display ads out of favor to begin with! Guess what? Users still ignore them nothing has changed folks! Google doesn't make offensive things palitible. The slowest sites on the net are usually serving these, is there a correlation, I have no doubt at all.
I have read most of the eye tracking reports out there and 1 thing they all have in common is the area where users start. That is always about 1 1/2 inches below the top and at the extreme left. This indicates that the top 1 1/2 inches which is often logos and banners is scanned lightly, IMO, because users don't scan for images. With the average time on a page measured in seconds not minutes I do not see anything that can overcome the manner in which a page is read.
Search Engine Marketing
Wall Street will finally realize that eyeballs are a liability not an asset. They will finally understand that serving display advertising is at best a marginal business that is extremely sensitive to economic downturn and the first advertising spend to get cut because it's mainly a branding tool not a tool to drive sales.
PPC and Organic Search will prove it is not only recession proof but "fool proof" when done by professionals not Billy Bobs brother who can barely spell PPC, little on do it. Although all other net advertising see declines, SEO will thrive and gain share as the advertising market will see the advantages to free in a climate of decreased consumption by consumers.
Mobile Search
Mobile Search will not gain traction in 2008 and marketers will realize that the current technology provides an experience circa the web 1994, data plans are ridiculously high priced and are a major deterrent to surfing the net on a phone. At best Mobile Search will have less than 3% NA Search marketshare 2 years out. WIMAX or WIFI will never see the light of day because telcos and cablecos will make sure of that!
The iPhone is not what it seems
Rogers, the only carrier in Canada that can carry the "jesus phone" (officially over hyped at that point) and a Chinese entity have told Apple to stick it as they try to gouge them like only Apple knows how. A $300 phone with a data plan that starts at $200 a month? Considering, I pay about $120 for my landline and wireless phone with unlimited NA calling I think I can wait 'til I get home to watch "Fast Money" on the RCA.
Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality is not upheld and Sandvine technology enables the creation of a tollway for Google and other content providers on a two tier service. That will enrage those of us who realize that's just gouging because we already pay for routing to Google with our subscription to a cable and or telephone DSL service. The Telcos and Cablecos will pay off everyone in Washington to get it done proving the old adage "you gotta' spend a little to make a lot!".
The Web
The web 2.0 bubble will burst leaving many startups broken in its wake with Mahalo being the first well known Web 2.0 startup to be taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery when the backers realize the "SEO is Crack" post and the sites lack of traction indicate Mr. Calcainus obviously knows more about crack than Search.
A sucking sound will be heard on Social Networking sites! It will be determined that the sound is ad budgets being sucked down the crapper because the audience feels many ads are intrusions in their space. The creative, innovative "21st Century Madmen" (Mad Men is my favorite TV show) will see unrivalled success knowing that treating your audience as a "captive" audience is outdated and interaction is the name of the game. Social Networking sites will gain traction as the focal point for offline campaigns to be tied into online campaigns leveraging the "social networking" platforms to create dynamic "communities" based around an event or ad campaign theme.
posted @ Monday, January 28, 2008 6:19 AM