The IAB looks back on 2006, a vintage year for internet marketing.

Thursday, 14 December 2006


Approaching the final few weeks of a year always brings with it feelings of both reflection and anticipation. In an industry as fast moving as ours surveying the developments and achievements of the previous 12 months is quite a task and trying to predict what the New Year has in store is even harder.

It would have been a safe bet this time last December to suggest - following on from the growing popularity of blogs and podcasts - that whatever innovations 2006 was to bring, the consumer would be at its heart. Few could have predicted, however, the far reaching impact that social media was to have on industries, advertisers and consumers alike.

MySpace, Bebo, YouTube and Flickr cemented their reputations as revolutionary businesses that have altered decades-old media behaviour. In turn the leading social media enterprises have been rewarded by big money deals that have prompted the question of whether we are in the grips of a second dotcom boom – or bubble 2.0. There was nervous talk steadying the industry for an impending crash. The debates over this subject merely served to show how far the medium has come in the last five years.

Technological advances; the proliferation of broadband; online audiences of millions; relatively inexpensive new business start-up costs and the fact that it is private companies, not public investors that have been responsible for the biggest deals all serve to show the solid foundations on which the internet in 2006 is built.

In terms of how these developments have benefited internet marketing IAB CEO Guy Phillipson said this in a recent appraisal of the year: “the internet is now a formidable two-way entertainment and information resource for consumers – and from all walks of life people have embraced the medium as an essential part of their daily lives… All major marketers are recognising this; they’re hungry for greater understanding of the medium and increasing their online spend exponentially. At 10.5% (due to be around 12% by the end of the year) the UK now leads the world in terms of market share.”

The IAB predicts that by year-end internet advertising will have broken through the £2billion mark. In 2006, more than any year before, advertisers tracked and bravely reacted to the changes in consumer behaviour and reaped the benefits.

The boundaries of creative continue to be expanded at considerable pace. 18 months ago marketers tentatively advertised online because they felt like they should, because that’s where the audiences were. This year, the focus was more confidently on the ‘ideas’ and how to use the medium to best execute this.

It seems obvious to talk about the ‘empowered consumer’, but is this idea that has fed into the major internet advertising innovations of the year. There was a move away from non-interruptive formats, as user initiated advertising became increasingly effective. Returning to ideas of providing meaning, value and social currency to engage and inspire the consumer, advertisers have become less reliant on measuring click-through rates. Agency Republic's Musicubes campaign for BBC Radio 1 for example encapsulated the station’s brand identity through a self-publishing application that allowed users to share their musical taste on their MySpace page or other web presence.

Companies were encouraged to set their brands free online. Consumers are increasingly looking to take control of brands online through user-generated content, blogs and forums. It was realised that building brands under the old model of channelling images and messages via push marketing, or put another way: marketing that is created and owned by the manufacturer is increasingly not enough on it’s own anymore. The IAB begun advising advertisers to not necessarily reinvent the way they market overnight, but recommended a shift in mindset that requires advertisers to ‘unthink’ much of the old.

Our second annual conference IAB Engage 2006 built on 2005’s event. The major themes to come out of the conference were those of connectivity, integration, convergence, people to people media and the importance for marketers to create content of value for the consumer.

The event also represented the ideal opportunity to present the results of our first Brand Engagement study with Carat Insight. The cross-media research proved that the internet is not just a direct response medium; it also has exceptional brand-building capabilities – performing better than any other medium.

Just as IAB Engage 2005 provided a foundation for the successes of 2006, this year's conference also offered a glimpse of just what a monumentous year we will have in 2007. As Terry Semel of Yahoo! said at the event, with the advent of video, mobile, and social media the "actual growth potential for advertising online is being understated."



January

• MySpace UK launches
• MySpace powered Arctic Monkeys release fastest selling UK debut album
• Peer to Peer technology used by Warner Bros and BSkyB to allow faster delivery of video
• Alex Tew's homepage makes a million dollars
• Northern Ireland becomes first province in Europe to have 100% broadband connections
• Domain name Sex.com sold for $12million
• Cadbury Trebor Bassett gives online a central position in customer relationships
• Glue London win January’s Creative Showcase for their Royal Marine Campaign
• IAB launch members' area on website
• Agency.com triumphs at Creative Showcase Grand Prix Awards with its campaign for NSPCC

February

• Nielsen/ NetRatings reveal half of UK internet population visit member community sites every month
• Q Magazine claims the internet has facilitated the biggest revolution in music since punk
• Tory leader David Cameron dispatches leading party officials to learn from the US Republican Party how the internet can be used as a political weapon. Seeds of “web” Cameron sewn here
• iTunes clock up its one-billionth download - Coldplay's Speed of Sound
• Ricky Gervais podcast enters Guiness Book of records as the most downloaded podcast of all time
• Profero’s child protection online campaign wins February’s Creative Showcase award
• Tesco proves the most popular destination for Valentines gifts according to Hitwise research
• IAB begin comment pieces
• IAB host Oscar themed members’ party

March

• IAB/ PwC figures reveal that online adspend is up 65% to £1.4 billion by the end of 2005
• ComScore figures estimate that 694m people aged 15 or over worldwide use the internet in March
• Google research reveals that time spent using the internet overtakes TV viewing for the first time
• Web 2.0 is everywhere
• Law professor Michael Geist declare we are in the midst of video clip culture
• Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy becomes the first single to reach number 1 on downloads alone
• Rupert Murdoch believes that newspapers need to embrace all areas of digital media and coins the phrase “fast food media”
• Agency Republic's Musicubes campaign for BBC Radio 1 wins March's Creative Showcase
• Industry agree late copy policy
• IAB host half-day Engage for Business conference

April

• The BBC director-general Mark Thompson unveils his vision for the future of the BBC putting new media at the heart of its operations
• Fisher-Price launch iTod MP3 player for three year olds
• Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia: 365 Days 524 Recipes wins the first Blooker prize for the best blogger-turned-author
• Coca-cola targets users of social networking sites such as MySpace in an effort to tap into modern youth culture
• Agency Republic wins April’s Creative Showcase for the From A to S campaign for Mercedes-Benz
• Tesco’s online operations make profit of £56.2m

May

• IMRG report that online shopping has increased at an average year on year rate of 45% for previous six months
• Emap announce that women digital downloaders are buoying music sales
• News Corp. announce American drama 24 is to be sold through MySpace
• Broadband service for over 50s launched
• BBC, Flickr, MySpace, and Guardian Unlimited are big winners at 10th Webby Awards
• glue London's 'Ave a word' campaign for Mini wins May's Creative Showcase
• IAB launches “Progress” training programme to counter industry skill shortages
• IAB host Engage for sales half-day conference

June

• The first two weeks of the World Cup drive a massive 3m unique users to the BBC Sport homepage every day
• 31 million highlights clips are downloaded from Fifa Word Cup site
• Pipex announce that David “the Hoff” Hasselhoff stars in more viral emails than any other star
• Channel 4 becomes the first broadcaster to begin broadcasting the majority of its programming live on the internet
• The Sunday Times claims YouTube is threatening to become a “cultural revolution”
• Car Phone Warehouse describes the demand for Talk Talk’s “free” broadband offer as overwhelming
• Dare Digital's campaign for Vodafone Office Mobile Solutions wins June's Creative Showcase Award
• IAB UK spearheads launch of definitive online population survey with NRS

July

• A Deloitte study into the views of 30 UK publishers reveals the BBC is the most admired name in digital publishing
• Computers aimed at "three years and over market" and Saturday morning computer classes increase in popularity
• The Guardian announces that digital technology is evolving the way we think
• BSkyB become the latest company to enter into the “free” broadband market
• A blogger successfully swaps a paperclip for a house
• Play win July's Creative Showcase Award for their campaign for ITV1's saturday tea time show, Prehistoric Park
• IAB host Engage for Brands half day conference

August

• With a 3.9% share of daily worldwide internet visits, YouTube has overtakes MySpace as top community site on the internet
• Office for National Statistics reports the number of UK broadband houses is set to reach the 10million mark thanks to the plethora of "free" broadband initiatives
• Snakes on a Plane released. Movie doesn’t match up to online hype
• USwitch.com reports the average amount of time spent online per week by the UK's 10 million broadband users
• is 23.5 hours
• Ofcom research reveals that nearly two million British households make fee calls over the internet
• Vivendi Universal’s Spiralfrog is set to make its song catalogue available to download for free in the US and Canada
• MySpace selects Google to become their exclusive search engine
• Swindon is announced as capital city of broadband in the UK
• with 50% of residents using the high-speed connection
• LandRover promising to "embrace the web in away no other car manufacturer has ever done before
• " with a user generated content campaign
• AKQA win August's Creative Showcase Award for their 'Results for real life' campaign for Yell.com
• IAB begins the Summer of Debates

September

• Yahoo! answers launched
• Royal Mail introduce internet stamp-printing service
• David Miliband
• Environment Secretary
• has to retire UGC function as internet users weren’t taking it seriously
• Microsoft launches YouTube rival
• Soapbox
• The winner for September's Creative Showcase Awards is the Diesel Heaven campaign by Airlock

October

• The UK internet advertising grows 40.3% year on year to be worth £917m for the first half of the year according to IAB/ PwC online
• Google purchases video-sharing site YouTube.com in a £884m stock deal
• Carphone Warehouse purchase AOL from Time Warner for £370million
• Handbag.com is purchased by the National Magazine Company for a reported £22m
• The winner of October’s Creative Showcase Awards is Grand Union’s Commit campaign for the Energy Saving Trust
• IAB/ Carat Insight brand engagement study proves online is an effective brand building medium
• Discussion forum launched on IABuk site

November

• IAB Engage 2006
• FMCG advertisers in Europe announce they plan to increase their online media spend by up to 75% by 2008
• Europeans now spend 11 hours a week online up one hour on last year according to the EIAA
• IMRG report that online spending this Christmas will reach a record £7bn
• Yell.com launch online shopping channel
• Sumo.tv
• the First ever UGC TV channel launches
• BT Vision launches
• IAB host Engage for Autos half-day conference