internet marketing trends in 2010

At the end of each year I usually jot down some areas within online marketing that I think are worth keeping a closer eye on the following year and usually easily come up with 3 or 4.

Albeit a bit late posting, 2010 is looking like it will be a year of accelerating change in online marketing.

Here’s some of the areas I am thinking about:

1. Mobile

With the growth of smartphones and in particular the success of the iPhone and Android; 2010 is promising the return of the old guard in the mobile space with Microsoft and Nokia talking about major improvements to their devices so mobile data usage can only continue its acceleration in usage. Add the launch of a tonne of new ereaders; the growth of netbooks and now the launch of the new iPad and it is no wonder that I think mobile is the number one place for innovation in internet marketing in 2010.

Of course, everyone jokes it is always the year of mobile every year so in that sense 2010 is no different. But I don’t remember seeing as much potential in mobile marketing since the launch of mobile data services circa 2003 (though.. umm.. yes that did flop. Big time).

Still, although the answers to mobile marketing are not there yet; ads are being delivered and general usage is growing quickly – Admob released some statistics at the end of last year which illustrate this growth: In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.

2. Social Media Marketing
The hottest topic and growth area of them all in 2009 – it is hard to see this juggernaut stopping in 2010. Expect to see some serious advances in metrics and marketing technology in 2010.

3. Video
Having worked in the video ad space for several years before Silverpop this seems like something that has been around for a decade. 2010 might be too soon but expect to see HTML 5 play its role in ads both in email and on the web over time and less flash (which you should not have been using inside emails anyhow right?) .

4. Location
Each year that goes by marketers get hit with more data to deal with online. Did you think it was going to get better in 2010? Not a chance. Real time location data is the latest piece of data to get your head around and deliver better more engaging and relevant messaging. Right now foursquare; Gowalla and MyTown (at least in the US) are leading the way in consumer usage but I expect to see Facebook and Twitter continue to roll out location based technologies integrated into their platforms for a significant increase in both usage and opportunities for marketers to take advantage.

5. Ad Optimisation
Companies like the Rubicon Project are delivering better returns for publishers and better results for advertisers by matching unsold publisher inventory with the right ad all in real time. This type of automation significantly improves the efficiency of buying and selling ads and should deliver better results at the same time.

Some others: Augmented Reality – still a way to go I think. Real time ad testing – with Adobe buying Omniture I fully expect the multi-variate testing capabilities to be integrated into the ads themselves allowing for real time self selection.

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Take a look at the video below and watch how making a mundane change can have a dramatic effect. Strikes me as being a physical manifestation of spinning a political message that so many people dislike and yet in this case by changing the context, value can be added.

And there’s not a bit of technology in sight.

On Monday the Guardian wrote up a story about Murdoch blocking Google from listing stories from his newspapers. This in addition to him changing his newspaper websites from being freely accessible to sitting behind a paywall made plenty of people think Murdoch was crazy.

It is true this could turn out to be a gift to his competitors as this blog mentions. Indeed the Telegraph on whose site that blog is hosted must be rubbing their hands in glee.

Maybe.

For me, I believe this is an opportune moment for newspaper publishers and one that may not come again for a while. Rupert Murdoch is taking advantage.

Rupert Murdoch is right to say that when Google first started indexing the web; publishers were not aware of what they were signing up to. In fact I think we can safely say they were completely blind to the consequences of what they were agreeing to. Countering this of course is the  fact that Google delivers 100,000 clicks every minute via Google News and its search engine. Removing itself from Google search is surely a surefire way to deliver more clicks to News International’s competitors right?

Definitely.

But it is an extremely short term view which will not help news publishers in the long term and that is where the opportunity that is available today comes from.

The key company mentioned in the comments made by Murdoch were that he would remove his websites from Google (my emphasis). In recent months, Microsoft launched Bing and gained enough traction that people are starting to believe Bing might go somewhere. It has of course a long way to go but one of the things Microsoft is doing is using its financial power to help it win the battle. Not just through its significant investment in R&D but also through partnerships. Witness Bing’s first mover deal with Twitter (which was quickly responded to by Google).

I believe either through a bright idea internally at News International or through a direct Microsoft approach that News International will strike commercial terms with Microsoft Bing and deliver its content through its news aggregation channel and through its search engine.

That will reset the relationship between search engines and news publishers and possibly lead to the newspapers being freely available on the web. I wonder how long it will be before Google agrees commercial terms with News International?

My bet is it will be quick enough that News International articles will never be removed from Google..

[update] The Financial Times is reporting that Micrsoft are in talks with News International to index their news stories in Bing.

Just got back from the latest mashup event – Social Media 09. Think Simon and Tony would agree that this was a very different event to previous mashups – though it did feel like a bit of an elevator pitch of case studies! Presentations were 7.5 mins long which presenters seemed to struggle with and it felt like there were dozens of them. Despite the early niggles (couldn’t see the screen and it was very hot) and the feeling of being bombarded with different topics too quickly by the end just the great quality of some covered up some of the others which felt a bit stale and dated.

The highlight for me was the directlive campaign which managed to do a great social media campaign without even using twitter which for good or bad seems to be mandatory these days. But there were plenty of others and it helped crystalise my thinking in several different areas. All of which should spur on a number of blog posts to completion.

So all in all a good event. Now onto writing the rest of those blog posts. Oh and for those interested – here is the twitter stream for the event. It was up on a screen during the event and some definitely made me chuckle – just a shame I couldn’t tweet and respond/retweet with my iphone’s battery on its last legs and work emails taking priority

So you have just installed Windows 7 – and if you have upgraded from Windows XP or done a clean install you are going to need to reinstall all those applications you just lost. I just found a quick way to download it all in one go: Ninite.
It installs all the apps default settings, saying [...]

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