MetaMuse

New Ad Spending Forecast

In a Clickz post I read yesterday, they write about Piper Jaffray's predictions for online ad spending. Some of the takeaways:

• Online ad spending expected to exceed $80B by 2011, including search advertising, display ads, text links, video advertising and email.
• People are the driving force. As more consumers spend more time online, create content and control their own media consumption, advertisers will continue to boost online budgets.
• Increasing fragmentation of media choices is among the key challenges advertisers will face. More touch points will exist and advertisers will have to spread their budget across multiple media platforms. What they really mean is unclear, but this article states that "advertisers can no longer expect to reach audiences in contextually-relevant places". I think what they're saying is that the supply of contextual  inventory will not keep pace with demand, forcing advertisers to spend elsewhere.
• They believe Google can achieve 70-80% market share both in the US and worldwide. This seems to conflict with that last point.
• Video ad formats will experience a growth spurt as brand advertisers move money from TV to the Web.
• Small advertisers (otherwise unable to afford mass market vehicles) will continue to drive online ad spending. AMEN.

I agree that video advertising will grow substantially, because it's easy for traditional media TV media buyers to understand. I believe display advertising (CPM) will see lackluster growth, if any -- the ROI just isn't there. I believe that we're at the forefront of the "personal web" which leverages the true power of 1-to-1 targeted marketing . This will bring about a new wave of contextually/behaviorally targeted ad growth (CPC), which further grows the "long tail" of advertisers while also serving as a revenue model for the long tail of publishers.

More MBL Problems

Wow, MyBlogLog sure keeps having a tough time with hacking and spam. Unfortunate for them -- it doesn't seem like the fixes are minor either. At least they're responding well to their users, though I wonder how long people are going to tolerate it.

UPDATE: Steve Poland wrote an interesting post on this at TechCrunch, which elicited the usual swarm of negativity. Boy that crowd is tough these days -- they love to attack.

I Was Wrong about 2000Bloggers

When I first heard of the 2000 Bloggers thing, it was through the lens of a negative post. As a result, I saw this as simply a bunch of people trying to artificially increase their search engine rankings. I even referred to it as a "useless linkfarm", but comments by Juliet and Elaine resonated with me and I gave the site a good look. I was wrong.

While I still see it as a clear promotional effort, what I now realize is (a) how interesting it is (check it out for yourself) and how that in and of itself has driven the value to all members, and (b) how consistent this value prop is with my own beliefs AND my business. I see now this is about:

• Finding new and interesting blogs to read. I think we all tend to huddle together in our own little worlds (memes, feeds, etc). The long tail is a wonderful place to explore.
• Being found, and getting a little visibility for once! But in some context ...
• Seeing the story behind the faces. What REALLY did it for me was Elaine's post where she puts a little personal info next to the new members. How cool.

I'd like to offer my support of the 2000Bloggers community, and help it live on. It would be my sincere honor for each of you to add your picture and URL to Others Online, and allow us to help promote you. When you see the "Your Interests" field be sure to add "2000Bloggers". If you opt to use our IE toolbar (we have Firefox too, but you'll have to ask us for it -- it's still in private beta), you'll see relevant people from the 2000 Bloggers community wherever you browse to. You'll see their picture, the other interests you have in common, their online status, and the link to their blog. If you opt out of the toolbar -- no worries -- your picture and URL will still show to others and we'll also highlight you in our widgets too (see above right).

Speaking of widgets, if you like we can also contribute a widget for y'all to put on your sites too.

One blog can only go so far to promote 2000 people and help us all see what you're about, especially when it takes so long to load. I know I look forward to seeing you in the context of my Web browsing, wherever I go on the Web. I'll look for you and visit your blog, hoping you'll pay it forward.

We're still in "preview" mode and not officially launched, so please be kind and let me know if you experience any problems (jordan AT othersonline DOT com). Any/all comments and feedback would be very much appreciated.

For those of you who think this is self-serving, I understand. I suppose it is a little, but it's not evil -- this is an authentic gesture of support.  I can assure you that I'm not going to make jack-squat in revenue from this, and I have 4 new servers in a data center for this sort of thing (just sorta sittin there). I figured this would be a good way to put them to use for the benefit of 2000 Bloggers looking for a little love from other long tailers.

So add your picture and URL to Others Online and get some love! By the way, you can learn more about Others Online here.

Others Online Blog Live!

Just one of those things I knew needed doin' but still hadn't done it. http://blog.othersonline.com is now live though, and linked to from our Web site. Thought the new blog needed a little link love from this one.

Speaking at Ignite Seattle

Brady from O'Reilly was nice enough to grant me 5 minutes to speak about "Distributed Social Networking and a New Metaphor for Search" at the next Ignite Seattle event. Now I just need to pull some slides together. The format is interesting -- you get 20 slides and they auto-advance every 15 seconds. I think they take video of you as well, so I'll post  a link to that if they do.

The crux of the matter may be the free drink tickets which the speakers get. I'm the 20th speaker out of 21 in total -- should be about 11pm when I stumble my way on stage.

Google's Personalized Search

Less than a week ago, Google announced that it was automatically enrolling/activating three Google products for all new Google accounts: (1) Search History, (2) Personalized Search, and (3) Personalized Homepage.

Danny Sullivan writes an excellent piece describing the changes and ramifications in detail, with valuable screen shots. Here are some of the key takeaways:

• The Search History feature stores everything you've done on Google, by default. Before you had to sign up for it, now all users will be provided these features automatically. It is keeping track of all web searches, image, news and shopping searches, what you click on, etc.  Most users will not see or know that this is happening. The intent is to use that information to make future searches more relevant to you.
• Users do have the ability to remove items from Search History, or even to delete all your Search History. Users also have the option to opt-out of the service.
• If you delete your Search History records, they are not really deleted. Google still keeps the records in some form, and uses that information to improve their overall products. In other words, Google is still profiling you and you have no control over your profile.

Google continues to push the bounds of consumer privacy,  by directly coupling a user value proposition to the act of profiling. As a result, they train the average user to accept giving more information to Google, which in turn leads to more relevant ads. Others Online can simply follow in their enormous wake.

Web 2.0 is linking *People*

Brilliant work by a professor, describing the evolution of the Web.

More MyBlogLog Hacking and Spam

Checked out my blog stats today, only to find many "views" of  wowfreeipods.com (do not click). (No, I know nothing of that domain -- it sure ain't mine.) This person appears to be spoofing MBL IDs (it's easy enough apparently) in order to promote their free ipods Web site. The whole idea is that I look at my stats to see which pages readers go to, see this page (not mine), which prompts me to click on it and see what it is.

Then I get a message from the person. Crap ... this is just the beginning and the spam is only going to get worse. If it continues then I'll have to find another stats reporting site. It could be a big problem for MBL.

New Others Online Widget

I'm happy to display on this blog an alpha release of our new Others Online widget, upper right column. This is simply javascript that pulls relevant people/profiles from the Others Online service, and the publisher has control over who gets listed. We're still working on the wizard, which will allow publishers to change the display parameters, brand it how they like, and control the display of profiles as follows:

• Show others online who are relevant to the content.
• Show the specific profiles of those who are on the publisher's favorites list -- think of this like a blogroll on steroids.
• Show others online who have an interest in specific keywords (like show every user who is into "dirt jumping, muse, photography, myspace, 24, etc.")
• Show profiles of those who have read or are reading your blog.

As the viewer runs their mouse over the widget, a fly-out shows more information on the user, including their Web site links, username, age/gender/location, interests and online status. Each interest is clickable, taking you to a page which shows all people with that interest.