U.S. Online Ad Market Grows in Q1 – NYTimes.com.

Looks like at least the online advertising industry is recovering from the great recession.  U.S. Online ad revenue hit US$5.9 billion, the highest-ever total for a first quarter according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

ComScore also recently reported that impressions of display ads (static and rich media ads; excluding video ads, house ads and all ads < 2,500 total pixels) rose 15 percent in the first quarter, year on year, to a record $1.1 trillion. Spending on this ad format totaled $2.7 billion, or $2.48 per thousand impressions (CPM), according to comScore.

Interesting data cited by CMI, SDI and other sources around how much pharma is spending to reach physicians on the web across e-detailing, online meetings and web-based promotions.  It is unclear if this data includes web-site development (ie. building pharma’s physician portals).

Quantifying pharma’s online promotional shift – Medical Marketing and Media.

Still at a tiny portion of overall budgets, spending on reaching physicians on the web is increasing.

“SDI says its ePromotion Audit, which tracks eDetails, online meetings and other web-based promotional activities for physicians, showed an increase of nearly 7% in industry spending on ePromotion, from $491 million in 2008 to $523 million in 2009. In terms of overall share, ePromotion commands 2.5% of total promotion (details, events, DTC, journals and ePromotion), vs. 2.4% in 2008.”

This 2.5% is roughly in line with the “overall” 2.6% pharma spend (MD’s and consumers combined) that TNS data reports presented in Ad Age and as graphed here by John Mack.

The only constant is change… and if you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.

Cory Treffiletti posts an interesting read about how Google, Apple and Facebook are rapidly becoming the new big three (replacing the TV networks of old) due in large part to their being channel agnostic in their desire to aggregate audiences.  He rightfully points out that the traditional networks have been asleep at the switch and their complacency has cost them their throne at the top of the media heap.

MediaPost Publications The Battle Of The Big Three 05/05/2010.

Mediapost’s Stephen DiMarco wrote a very good article articulating three key points when considering who gets “credit” for online conversions and ROI.  A subject that is much debated these days with many studies being done to show search often gets the credit (due to immediacy of conversion and proximity of timing that searching has to buying/deciding) when display and brand building still play a very powerful role, but simply aren’t measured as easily.  See my earlier blog post on how display actual improves the performance of search campaigns.  Here are Stephen’s three lessons (full article at link below):

Lesson #1: Don’t fall in love with one or two metrics.

Lesson #2: Ad servers can help, but they’re only one tool.

Lesson #3: Integration of data sources is worth the investment of time and resources.

MediaPost Publications Campaign Attribution Isn’t A Zero-Sum Game 05/04/2010.

You’ve heard of search engine optimization on sites like Google, Bing, and now even Twitter; the question is, what’s next? Marketers in the digital age need data and content, and there are lots of innovative tools coming out to organize the vast amount of stuff that’s out there.

Here are four search engines that, according to Monica O’Brien, author of Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It, will be making huge waves in search by 2012.

Check these out

When you’re considering your content development strategy for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how much effort to put into creating high-quality content, consider these four factors. There certainly can be individual pages on your site where only one or two of the factors apply, but, for your Web site overall, make sure your content strategy takes all four pieces into account.

See the factors

Good Interview…

I was at the Ad Age Digital Conference in NYC last week when Twitter COO Dick Costolo did the “big reveal” and announced that Twitter finally had a revenue model:  Sponsored Tweets.  Twitter Blog

While the announcement certainly caused a stir in the twittersphere and blogosphere, including a visit to the conference by CNBC reporters, all I can say is… “really?”.  After four years of contemplation, strategy sessions, discussions with investors, VC’s, strategic advisors, etc…. and “Promoted (sponsored) Tweets” is the best you could come up with?

For a company that is supposed to be breaking the mold and blazing a new path, this model feels used up and copycat.

The trepidation and uncertainty with which it was presented, leaving more questions than answers, also makes one wonder how much thought actually went into this (certainly very little testing did).  It feels like Twitter is building a house of cards that is getting ever more delicate to try to monetize.  In essence the answer to questions such as “How with the Twittersphere react to this?”  were along the lines of, we have no idea but we came up with a totally innovative approach called “resonance” whereby if the promoted tweet doesn’t resonate with users we’ll turn it off.  I wonder if we are starting to coddle users too much.  Free services need revenue support to remain free.  It would be nice if people LIKED advertising, but few do… yes, highly targeted relevant advertising is MORE useful, but does it “resonate”.  Does anyone really PREFER to see advertising over a message from a friend?  Will they?

Man up Twitter and put a stake in the ground that you stand behind (oh, and how about doing some in-depth testing of your ideas before launching so you know if they will be successful… after all, you have a lot at stake here).

Would anyone like to take a bet that the outcome will be:

1.) Users revolt and Twitter panics and shuts this down and goes back to no business model

2.) Users accept and this is a slippery slope to more intrusive sponsored tweets/advertising (ie. moving beyond just search results, and injecting into all live feeds, adding graphics, etc…)

Here is some related reading from Forbes

Twitters’ Overview of Promoted Tweets (140 second video)

MediaPost Publications Are We CLEAR? Looking Through ‘Transparency’ 04/16/2010.  Well, it’s a start…. This is likely to be a long and arduous process, but self-regulation beats congressional regulation every time.  Will publishers and advertisers adapt in time to avoid regulation?

There are all kinds of e-mail marketers. You probably know some yourself. While this list is by no means scientific, here are five categories of e-mail marketers. Which type are you?