The online advertising community is looking forward to a strong 2006, with interactive marketing experts 24/7 Real Media revealing the top ten trends for the industry next year at the recent Ad:Tech conference in New York.
Among the revelations, 24/7 Real Media predicts that search engine marketing will reinvent itself as a lead-generation channel, while continuing to drive significant advertising revenue. Podcasting, blogging and mobile applications are expected to increase in attractiveness to advertisers, with behavioural targeting becoming increasingly indispensable for delivering the right content to the most receptive audience.
The report forecasts consumer-generated media to become increasingly attractive to advertisers, with traditional adspend shifted more and more to the internet as rising numbers of consumers come online.
24/7 Real Media also predicts brand advertisers to drive the next wave of growth for the paid search market, while technology and better data access will transform online advertising success to a formulaic equation.
Mobile carriers are expected to adopt new advertising models to boost revenues beyond usage, with video adverts predicted to start appearing on mobile phones as mobile usage rises to approximately 6.1 million subscribers.
Other trends for 2006 will see Japan assert its dominance in the paid search and interactive marketing arena, while performance based pricing models will demonstrate the true value of search engine marketing as a lead generation channel.
According to research from online magazine, Direct, marketers are shifting their adspend onto online, with 60% planning to raise their online advertising expenditure in 2006 (see Marketers Move Adspend Online).
The new 2005 Online Marketing Survey shows that marketers are allotting 41% of marketing budgets to online channels this year, taking money away from traditional direct marketing channels. The survey found that marketers allocated 75% for the traditional channels last year, compared to just 59% this year.
Internet advertising expenditure continues to rise at a healthy rate, with the latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) showing the medium to have reached a new record, totalling $5.8 billion an increase of 26% compared to the same period last year (see Record Online Adspend For First Half Of 2005).
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