And still more year end review… The world of advertising and marketing continued to mutate based on technology tools in 2007. Ten years ago, advertising was primarily dominated by newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Today, online advertising is growing at staggering rates because of the ability to more specifically target individuals. The downside of this explosion of new marketing tools is the fact that the audience is very fractured in their use of the tools. Whereas just about any demographic watched TV, there are millions of people that do not use a computer. The latest Pew Research Foundation study showed that only 8% of the US population can be considered rabid technology users. A full 49% do not integrate technology with their daily lives. This forces advertisers into using broad multi-touch campaigns in order to reach people in the ways they think fit. This year was the first time I observed my 16 year old son actually watch very little TV and instead download shows and watch them on his computer. At this point, he would be fine without magazines, newspapers and TV as long as he has his MacBook and bandwidth.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the practice of purchasing links to search terms exploded and with it, the ability to target people around the world that are looking for a discrete piece of information. Google, Yahoo, MSN and a few others are reaping the benefits of sponsored search and we are still in the baby stages of figuring out how to make this kind of marketing pay. This year was the first time I personally bid on a number of search terms and used the traffic to drive speaking gigs. The return on investment for me was fantastic – nearly 1000%.

The eCommunity craze continued to build in 2007 and along with it, many advertising and marketing schemes for leveraging the members. In some cases, it comes from gathering profile information and doing intelligent marketing. In other cases, it comes from leveraging the powerful eword of mouth capabilities eCommunities provide. Now that people sort themselves out by interests, the job of targeting is getting easier. The problem is that leads us to…

The dark side… 2007 is the year that will be remembered for release of systems like fetchback.com and a host of tools that gather more information on you than you realize, and cross reference it with databases you would be surprised to find. Privacy on the Internet is more hotly debated all the time and for the first time I can remember, there were articles being written that postulated that the new generations really do not care. They are more than willing to post detailed profiles so that people will only approach them if there is a good reason. My viewpoint is that unless the government gets more involved with setting guidelines, there will be very little privacy at all if you spend any time at all on the web.

The bottom line on advertising and marketing is that it will never be the same. In fact, it is on the precipice of a dramatic change in both style and substance. Multi touch campaigns are here to stay – at least for a couple of decades because it will take that long before a general demographic can be reached through one medium again.