David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst, says “… Google reporting a 21% jump in net US ad revenues for Q1 2010… was a key signal that the tide was turning.”

The search market will be up 15.7% year over year to almost $12.4 billion, while spending on banner ads will increase 8.2%. Video will again post the highest

growth rate, rising 48.1% to $1.5 billion.

Brand marketers increasingly realize they need to engage their target audiences more and more in the digital space. Mr. Hallerman noted that “Even as the portal’s overall net US ad revenues were down 4.5% in Q1 2010, the display ad component on Yahoo!’s sites were up by 11.7%”

As marketers pull dollars away from media such as newspapers and radio, says the report, they are shifting a portion of that spend to the Internet. In addition, growth in online video advertising is bolstered by marketers shifting dollars from their TV budgets.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, eMarketer’s online ad spending benchmark, reported Q1 2010 spending up 7.5% year over year. eMarketer predicts even greater double-digit increases each quarter for the rest of 2010.

“Overall, the US economy is recovering… sooner than last year’s data led us to believe,” Mr. Hallerman said. “… not only did the GDP increase by 3.2% in Q1 2010, but there was a corresponding 3.6% gain in personal consumption expenditures… greater consumer activity is one of the prime motivators for greater advertising spending.”

Source: MediaPost Research Brief – Search And Banners Lead Online Ad Spend Forecast ]]> http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/search-and-banners-lead-online-ad-spend-forecast/feed 0 http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/signals-strong-for-internet-radio http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/signals-strong-for-internet-radio#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 13:39:47 +0000 American Interactive Marketing http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/?p=608
Signals Strong For Internet Radio Erik Sass, May 04, 2010 05:52 PM Internet radio is burgeoning, according to a new report from SNL Kagan, which predicts more rapid revenue growth. But the big question, as far as media buyers are concerned, is how much of this future growth will come from advertising sales.Looking at the top Internet radio operations, SNL identified CBS Interactive as the revenue leader, with total revenues of $550 million in 2009, thanks in part to its ownership of Last.fm and ad sales partnerships with AOL Radio and Yahoo. It also has a large number of station Web sites.

Counting other partnerships with CNET, Radio.com and TV.com, CBS Interactive boasted an average 226 million unique users per month in 209. Competitor Clear Channel posted total revenues of $175 million in 2009 — virtually all from advertising — with an average monthly base of 100 million unique users.

Among pure-play Internet radio operations, MySpace led the way with $490 million in revenue and an average 70 million unique users per month — boosted “by leveraging Fox’s music-focused TV shows ‘Glee’ and ‘American Idol,’ according to SNL Kagan.

In 2009, Pandora had about $50 million in revenue — also mostly from advertising — and 50 million registered users, about half of whom are actually active.

Adding up the top players, Internet radio delivered over $1.25 billion in revenue in 2009 — but comparing this figure with separate numbers from the Radio Advertising Bureau, it’s clear that online advertising is still playing second fiddle to subscription and download fees.

The RAB reported total digital ad revenues in 2009 of $480 million — or 38% of total online radio revenues.

Source: MediaPost News - Signals Strong For Internet Radio

]]> http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/signals-strong-for-internet-radio/feed 0 http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/borrell-local-mobile-ads-to-double-this-year http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/borrell-local-mobile-ads-to-double-this-year#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:50:21 +0000 American Interactive Marketing http://americaninteractivemarketing.com/?p=606 By Chris Kouba

Twitter unveiled a service Tuesday that lets companies tweet sponsored search ads. The announcement represents the first in several planned features the company will introduce during the coming year. The first phase, beginning today, maps out a multiphase release for advertising on the site.

The tool, Promoted Tweets, relies on tweets available in Twitter’s organic search results, which means those appearing in a person’s Twitter stream, but Twitter co-founder Biz Stone promises the ads won’t be intrusive. The technology behind the platform will trigger sponsored tweets at specific times to followers of the brand, explains Stone in a blog post.

People will begin to see Tweets promoted by advertisers at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. It’s not clear, however, whether the platform would provide advertisers with reports, or how keyword bidding would work.

“It’s likely Twitter will set up an auction system similar to the one used for keywords on Google,” says Forrester Research Analyst Josh Bernoff. “In fact, it would shock me if they didn’t, because these ads will become more successful if they’re not sold to individual companies like a media company does.”

Twitter’s first advertisers — Starbucks, Bravo and Virgin America — have been using the platform to promote products long before Promoted Tweets became available.>

Bernoff says that obviously, click-through rates (CTRs) will depend on the message in the ad. A click-through to a coupon for a free cup of coffee will likely yield higher results than a blast promoting a product. “Any sort of hard-sale push will likely fail,” he says. “It might even generate backlash. The message must fit into the conversational nature of Twitter.”

Before rolling out additional phases to the one-year platform during the coming year, Stone says the company wants to gain a better understanding of the effect Promoted Tweets will have on people using Twitter and the advertisers trying to reach them.

Insight into the long-awaited platform first emerged during the IAB Annual Leadership meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif. in February. Anamitra Banerji, who heads product management and monetization at Twitter, told attendees when Twitter launches an ad platform, it will become “explicitly clear that a sponsor” paid for the ad, and make it “relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad.”

Twitter on Friday announced the acquisition of iPhone client and third-party application Tweetie from Atebits. Developers still have the ability to tap into Twitter iPhone and iPad applications to create tools and integrations for people who use the service. Some third-party developers began to voice opinions on whether any new applications would compete directly with their own.

But it appears that third-party developers and Twitter co-founders Stone and Evan Williams have competition, as the company attempts to find a business model that generates sustainable revenue. The competition opens business models, not only for advertisers, but ordinary people, musicians, artists, or small business owners who believe they have something important to say.

Paid search on Google or Bing might have some competition for ad dollars, too. On Monday, Idealab founder Bill Gross unveiled TweetUp, a search tool that lets people bid on keywords to move up tweets in search results. The platform combines a bid-based marketplace with algorithm-based triggers that consider the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters.

TweetUp Chief Marketing Officer Steve Chadima says the ability to bid on keywords to push up tweets will allow people to swim through the clutter and find the important information. “People are brands in Twitter and they want followers,” he says. “You want thoughtful followers — people committed to you and what you have to say.”

Chadima says TweetUp will generate revenue through a standard impression-based advertising model. The minimum bid is 1 cent, but he says the market will bid up the keywords to its own discretion. “There are some keywords in the ad and the traditional Internet search model that are quite expensive, but if you look at those keywords they represent words like Web-hosting services,” he says.

Source: MediaPost Online Media Daily – Twitter Unveils Paid Advertising Platform, Finally, Avoids ‘Hard-Sale Push’