Not necessarily very expandable (you really WISH there is only one advertiser using this technique at the same time), but at least it’s original 
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How long before animals advocates get involved?
“A lot of expectations are coming down in terms of monetizing social media” says , quoted by Daniel Lyons in his latest article debunking some of the myths around blogging. Most (99.99%) blogs don’t make money and at best create value in an indirect way (exposure, network, invitations).
I agree with the main point of the article: the business model for social media is yet to be found. It feels like 2002, when Google was still looking for a model while Overture was leading the way with a far from perfect offering. From the 2002 New York Times:
[...] while Google is the leader in searching Web pages, it is a tiny force in the rapidly growing market for selling advertising related to search. The dominant player there is Overture Services, which began life as GoTo.com, a search engine that let Web sites bid to be listed and ranked in searches. (Whoever pays most gets listed first, the runner-up is listed second, and so on.)
Users never warmed to GoTo, but advertisers, especially small ones, jumped on it. What better place to advertise your cozy inn than on a page where someone is searching for information about the Berkshires? So Overture regrouped, and it now offers to split revenue with sites that display its listings on their search results pages. Yahoo, MSN, America Online and all the other major sites — except Google — have agreed.
There is money in social media because they are pretty good at captivating audiences, and there has always been money in attention. But nobody has found the perfect solution yet. Is there a new Google brewing somewhere, a new model that will storm the world of advertising?
The markets are going down. Advertising budgets will be among the first casualties. Consulting, sponsoring, training, advertising. All these things are scratched away in tough times, which might explain why Google’s stock has gone from 700$ to 400$ in the past months.
Let’s imagine for a second that the search giant needs cash. They have to make you pay for their service. Yes it’s a big stretch – Google with no cash is as plausible as, say, Arthur Andersen or Lehmann Brother going bust 
. But let’s imagine that. And here comes my question:
How much would you be willing to pay to use the search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Finance or Calendar? Would you run to the competitors if tomorrow each of these services was not free anymore?
Is Google leaving billions on the table because their users would stay with them even without a free pricetag? Or is that impossible because the end of free means the beginning of accountability and user support?
Can free last forever, and what happens if the answer is no?
Google continues to follow users attention by working on an in-game advertising engine that will extend the company’s reach to the non-web world. After radio and newspaper, the search giant continues to work towards being the one stop solution for any advertising need.
Online companies seem to move to the offline world when they get more mature, disturbing the established players in the process. The old guys, who usually have deep pockets, answer by going on a buying frenzy, grabbing any competitor they find. The advertising industry is a good example of that process, as the 2007 acquisitions list shows.
It will be interesting to see where the domination of Google will stabilize. Can competitors fight back or is it too late?
Add-Art is a browser extension replacing online ads with Art.
Beside the obvious gains – freeing your saturated brain from more advertising – Add Art features curated exhibitions, and creates a new space of expression for artists. Win win right?
The Image Fulgurator is “a device for physically manipulating photographs”. It projects a parasite picture that appears on the pictures taken by (unaware) photographers.
After flying logos (video here) this is another technology that will have advertisers lick their chops in anticipation of all the tricks they will be able to play on the public, at least until the governments figure out a way to control these sure to be wild and intrusive means of capturing the public’s attention. More on this project on the video below:
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I was on TV yesterday (video here, be nice) talking about Google’s domination, and came up wondering who is still clicking on ads these days. Conventional wisdom used to say that “new users click on ads”, but now that we are all turning into savvy internet veterans with years of surfing under our belts, who still thinks that the results on the right ARE the non-sponsored results?
A new study released this morning came up with a few interesting findings about ads-clickers and tells us that “heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad click”.
The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers. Further preliminary Starcom data suggests [...] shows no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.
If the other 50% are indeed fake clicks then we are headed towards a nice crash of the current Internet monetization system.
Interesting summary of which industries are spending money in online advertising. Figures are US only and should widely differ per country, but it’s an interesting information giving editors an idea of what content should actually net advertising money.
Link (via the bankwatch)
Online advertising picked up 7 percentage points of market share in a single year over offline.
US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies – Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN – grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.
US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%. [...]
Online advertising grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion (23% share to 30% share) while the offline portion shrank from $9.9 billion to $9.6 billion (77% share to 70% share).
This might be a distorted view. The fact that the 15 biggest television and newspaper companies lost ground does not mean the WHOLE offline pie got smaller. In fact, it seems local medias (who have more clearly delimited communities = more facility to monetize) are growing again. But there is something going on here, despite the fact that users seem to completely ignore online ads according to a recent study.
Can anybody name a major brand [...] that in the last decade has been created primarily through advertising? Nobody. I’ve never met a crowd that could. If you think of companies like Yahoo and Google and Starbucks and Amazon, these companies have been built by experience and by word of mouth. Marketing doesn’t work the way it used to.
Source: Customer Experience Crossroads: Eisenberg on the future of marketing (via Colin Henderson)