The future looks bright.  According to Borrell Associates, Online ad spending is thriving and poised to accelerate further in 2011.  Targeted display advertising is expected to see a 60% increase!

MediaPost Publications Borrell: Online Ad Spend To Gain 17.5% In 2011 08/24/2010.

Here is a topic that medical publishers, editors and advertising sales people know all too well.  The separation of advertising and editorial.  Doug Weaver of Upstream makes a case that this notion is dead (or must be killed) if traditional publishing is to survive.  It’s an interesting debate, since this advertising adjacency issue has been a  core value of high quality medical editorial.  The opposite position of course, is to never compromise one’s values.

Dead internet ideas: Advertising and editorial separation – iMediaConnection.com.

Ad Exchanges hold a lot of promise in theory.  Transparent inventory purchases, visibility into bid/ask prices for inventory in real time, real-time bidding for audience segments… but we are still very early and like with many early technologies – the bleeding edge is often reserved for rogue outliers who can’t find/make a business in legitimate channels.  Buyer (and Seller) beware!  Today’s Ad Exchange inventory leaves much to be desired.

AdSafe: Lotsa Risky Inventory on Ad Exchanges » Adotas.

Manhattan Research reported that 60% of US physicians are either actively using social media networks or are interested in doing so, and more than half of doctors say they are influenced by user-generated content they consider reputable. Physician-only communities have generated much attention as doctors demand private environments to exchange information without patients looking over their shoulders.

Social networking for doctors is still in an evolutionary phase, says Dr. Jason Bhan, co-founder of Ozmosis, a social media site for MDs. “Doctors wanted trusted information in the beginning, but are now building professional networks to help filter the overflow of information and prioritize their learning activities.” Further, within the past two years, several specialty associations have taken the plunge and created online communities for their HCP members.

Read more about this emerging trend.

Publishers often grapple with the question of if/when to take online ad sales inside.  NBC is doing it now with 60 Million unique monthly users across all of its properties.  What is the right size for publishers to consider “going inside”?  Is it based on # of uniques?  Total revenue?  Profit potential?  What do you think?

Should Ad Networks go on an acquisition spree and start buying content web-sites.  Many have, more probably will.  Is the conflict of interest too strong for both advertisers and publishers or is this the new world economy and are the conflicts palatable?  What do you think?

MediaPost Publications Why Ad Rep Firms And Networks Might Start Buying Content Sites 07/26/2010.

Nurses are no less active online than doctors, and their influence over patients is growing, but most pharma companies do not yet offer nursing-focused content on their professional Websites.

Read about the key trends that Manhattan Research’s Taking the Pulse Nurses says marketers should note as they watch and potentially target this segment.

Consumer marketers feeling more confident, says survey – Medical Marketing and Media.  Cegedim Dendrite survey finds that four inm 10 marketers expect DTC spend to increase in 2010.  Major areas money shifting into:   highly targeted Direct to Patient (DTP) and Physician marketing… both very good for the Internet.

Google is entering the age of transparency and has “disclosed” it’s revenue share with publishers.  They have self-reported that their revenue share on search is 51% to the publisher and 49% to Google.  The revenue share for the AdSense content network is purportedly 68% to the publisher and 32% to Google.

Read about it here straight from the horse’s mouth.

Inside AdSense: The AdSense revenue share.

What I find interesting about this is that these figures are presented in aggregate worldwide.  They are not in the AdSense contract.  So while a publisher may “feel” good about knowing this global revenue share, bear in mind that the very large Google partner publishers like AOL, MySpace, etc… are obviously skewing the average.  They are getting a much better deal than this and the smaller publishers are getting a much worse deal in order for the averages to work out.  True transparency would put the terms in the AdSense contract.

It seems Google has created it’s own conflict of interest in that search customers will logically have the potential to be “favored” by the Google algorithm if they are optimizing for Google profit (higher revenue to Google, lower payouts to publishers).

Of course there is also no mention of how revenue generated on Google.com, YouTube, and the various other properties Google owns is factored into this equation.

The  reality is their financial statements tell a different story.  They tell one of a company continuing to lower it’s cost of revenue (even if you assume ALL of this line item goes to partners, which is a stretch, it’s still declining).  See summary below ($’s in 000’s).

Wayne Friedman writes an article for Media Post, the title of which anyone could have predicted – with a theme that will be repeated many times over as data driven “audience” becomes more popular.

MediaPost Publications Advertisers Target Too Narrow An Audience 06/17/2010.

The challenge of course that publisher’s face when advertisers only want to reach 1% of their audience, is how do they monetize the other 99%?  Since tastes are fickle and constantly changing, as Friedman points out in his example of all tech titans wanting to reach Apple customers, one can’t change the model to only focus on a set 1% because next month it’s a different 1% that will monetize.

The Apple example is a classic.  As tech marketers focus their dollars on reaching “Apple” customers they are in essence funding their competitor.  After all, where’s the best place to reach Apple customers but on Apple products – many of which now carry advertising through iAds.