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Strong forecast for ebusiness and nanopublishing

That is the message we received from attending the AdTech 2004 conference in New York City. After attending a dozen or so very depressing Internet-related shows during last three years, we finally ended up at a show that was packed to capacity. You couldn't walk. You could feel the energy of the boom years.



Here are some key messages for ebusiness companies:

  1. Online advertising now offers many options for you to reach out to potential customers and acquire them. The two that we think are most effective are search marketing and contextual advertising.
  2. Google is king. There are other programs being offered but you absolutely must advertise on Google. The reach that Google offers is incredible.
  3. If you are wasting your dollars on television and print advertising or even more naive enough to send direct mail, it is time that you reviewed your channel strategy and reallocated your ad budget. Online advertising has a much higher ROI, particularly if you embrace performance-based advertising.

Messages for online nano-publishers

  1. You couldn't be in a better business. If you have the traffic and the real estate on the Internet, just keep doing what you are doing and prepare for retirement.
  2. Keep track of the trends in the world of advertising and reposition your blog or website accordingly.
  3. While websites will be around for a while (there are features that cannot be provided on a blog), the future is in blogs. The good news is that millions of businesses are clueless and still don't get it. So here is an opportunity for you to increase your footprint on the Web before others move in. Remember that it is easy to create content for a blog and it will be like a tsunami when the blog wave comes, but till then keep blogging. Two years later, you will be sitting in a world where the advertisers will be begging you to mention their product in your blog (if you like it, of course, and they pay for it).
  4. Never forget your customer. Or as they say, "Do no evil." So forget spamming (by the way, the days of email marketing are numbered any way), or creating content for spiders only, or using any deceptive business practices. If you want to create value for yourself and your advertisers, do only the right thing.