Online Advertising Grows by 27 Percent

The IDC in the US reported that "If you picked a career in Internet advertising you made a wise decision. Online advertising grew 27 percent last year, making it a sector unlikely to be affected even if the U.S. economy capsizes this year, according to an IDC analyst."

Relative to other media types, online marketing is good value for money right now. Many larger companies will be cutting their traditional marketing budget whilst increasing their online spend. This won't guarantee success but the learning process needs to start somewhere. Smart companies will learn less by trial and error rather be careful in developing their online strategy. Other companies will learn over time and waste plenty of in the process. Almost certainly, online marketing will continue to grow steadily for the next couple of years.

Google Adwords is mainly responsible for this huge growth rate. Google leads search marketing. I did a little comparison on Google Trends beta and compared the search terms and you can see that the word "Adwords" is fast becoming a houshold name.

South Africa features at 4th on average for these types of searches.

South Africa in 2008

I received this in an email this morning. You have to love how good ideas make their way around the internet. It's a unique take on positivity and recognition of the power of the internet.

Power, human nature and balance

A discussion I had on Friday with a colleague from Mpowered Business Solutions reminded me how important it is to regulate yourself. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lets look at it from the South African perspective, we have a great constitution and the first founding provision states "...South Africa...founded on the following values: ...Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms".

The internet is founded on the same principles. Information is the most valuable resource available to human society. IT is so valuable that the founders of the internet have always fought to maintain an open sharing policy, to not commoditise information. This information educates, empowers and promotes understanding between cultures, religions and nations: it helps alleviate the single biggest problem on the planet, intolerance and ignorance. Google takes their responsibility seriously when it comes to sharing and neutrality.

Some people predict that Microsoft's $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo will be forgotten, diluted and scoffed at in two years. When considering historical moments like this I ask myself what the checks and balances are.

South Africa has the anti-corruption unit called the Scorpions. This was put in place by the government to ensure they they themselves did not fall victim to themselves. We are all human and fallible, you know it and I know it. Google also sticks to their philosophy and they're completely different to traditional businesses. They realise that they have a responsibility (Point # 8) to each and every human being needing access to information; Information that may change the world.

Define above the line, below the line and on the line

It's good to see big ad agencies making a real effort to understand online. From what I've seen, traditional ad agencies and marketing companies are sometimes loathe to tell their clients to go and do something online. These agencies are gate keepers to a all of the media platrorms; newspaper, magazine, film, TV, outdoor, below the line above the line on the line, telephone line and washing line. Ad Age says of the Google/Publicis initiative: "...introduce a plan to exchange talent, embedding Google engineers within media-planning and -buying groups and bringing agency executives to the Googleplex to get a crash course in internet technologies". The article is not overly positive but AdvertisingAge often takes a fairly skeptical stance on these things. The point is that an ad agency is taking online marketing seriously. This is seriously cool.




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