24/7 Real Media's Interactive Marketing Experts Reveal Their Online Advertising Predictions for 2006; Podcasting, Online Product Placements to Increase, as TV Viewership Declines

Business Wire, Nov 8, 2005

Until iTV becomes a reality in the United States, TV advertisers will begin pressuring cable providers - many of whom now offer DVRs - to create an interim solution that addresses the TiVo Effect or suffer decreased future ad spending. 24/7 Real Media believes that the cable companies will turn to interactive marketing experts to replicate the successes they have achieved in delivering targeted messages online.

4. Brand advertisers will drive the next wave of growth for the paid search market

Even as performance- and acquisition-focused advertisers gravitate towards the direct response benefits of search, 24/7 Real Media experts expect to see a significant uptake in search from the major agencies and traditional off-line advertisers. This will be led, at least in part, by continued research and data into the branding benefits of search, studies into assisted and unassisted recall of brands based on participation in both display and search results in the same user session, the emergence of view-through data, as well as the tendency both from the engines and search engine marketers/agencies to bundle search messaging with display/affiliate/e-mail/other elements into consolidated media plans. This will allow the search sector to continue its current growth rates, reaching a critical mass in terms of benefit and audience that will enable it to finally become more than just a speck on the "big agency" media schedule.

5. Best practices in localized mobile marketing will be perfected overseas in 2006

The explosive growth of mobile ownership and the emergence of novel mobile behaviors in India and China will far overshadow mature markets elsewhere in South East Asia. With low PC ownership rates, cell phone and TV will continue to dominate the consumer's interactive media experience. Less restrictive regulatory environments coupled with the introduction of current generation mobile infrastructure have created a thriving market for rich media mobile content and value added service providers. Wireless carriers will soon deploy services with the ability to pinpoint local audiences and serve them targeted local advertising using enhanced, searchable "yellow pages" functionality. These markets will not only see the emergence of new use models, but also new business models. As a result, best practices in local advertising will be perfected in overseas markets long before they arrive in the United States. Interactive advertising providers with global reach and scale will benefit most from this trend in 2006, and be able to leverage these opportunities well before their landlocked peers.

6. Online advertisers will employ holistic targeting methods to deliver better results and reduce reliance on high-profile, high-CPM ad buys

In 2006, advertiser focus will be more on the audience itself and less on where or how the audience is captured. There is a nearly unlimited supply of ad impressions, but a limited number of Internet users. With growing Internet adoption rates, advertisers have gravitated to a handful of popular sites or portals in hopes of reaching their intended audience though this narrow tract of ad space.