Ben Butler looks ahead to the internet marketing industry of 2021 and predicts a brave new world.

Monday, 26 November 2007

During the course of IAB Engage 2007 we showed five short videos that ruminate on the past from an imagined future – 2021 to be precise. That year struck us as a significant time to set the films as it marked the thirtieth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee making the World Wide Web a publicly available service. Yes it was a good excuse to put our CEO Guy Phillipson through a rigorous aging makeup process, but it also enabled us to place the internet marketing industry of 2007 into a larger historical perspective. It permitted us to ask the question: “how did we get here and where might we be going?”

As 2006 drew to a close, at the time when thoughts naturally turn to assessing what’s gone before, the trade press were full of articles claiming that 2006 was a landmark year for digital. Whilst it was clear that the technological advancements and industry developments marked 2006 as an important year, we at the IAB saw it as a mere stepping stone on internet marketing’s path to realising its extraordinary potential. Likewise the achievements of 2007, whilst remarkable, are just the tip of the iceberg of what internet technology of the future will offer.

The future depicted in our videos stems from our warped imaginations and the desire to draw advertiser attention to particular areas of online where they can flourish. For example it’s unlikely the Facebook of the future will enable users to poke the deceased, but it is true that consumers and advertisers have barely scratched the service of what can be achieved with social media.

“Do me a web 2.0” is a familiar plea from clients with an eye on consumer behaviour, but have they asked themselves what exactly this means? Is it right for their brand and is it appropriate for the audience they are trying to target? This year we have seen great work from, amongst others, O2, Cadbury, VW, Virgin Trains and NSPCC, but it’s fair to say we are all still learning. Experience gained with the passing of time, coupled with a degree of trial and error, will ensure that future campaigns incorporating social media will flourish.

2007 has seen digital creative agencies finally start to get those brand building briefs in earnest and increasingly campaigns have been striving towards providing consumers with a brand ‘experience’. Online is well suited to direct response and it gets results, but marketers are realising that they can get their brands front of mind with a variety of online formats.

Likewise with search, we are fairly certain that the children’s game hide and seek is not under immediate threat from advancements in search technology nor will you be able to locate your lost glasses through the use of a Google hat. As advertisers get more adventurous with their search strategies, however, and as demographic, geographic, local and behavioural branches of search become more common place, we will see just how powerful the format can be.

Speaking at IAB Engage 2005 Bill Gates did some future gazing of his own. IAB chairman Richard Eyre asked him where he thought future advertising revenues would come from and would the internet be an important factor? His response was that because the internet would deliver all media and be an essential part of how we live our lives, that the future of advertising is the internet. Within the space of just two years it is already clear that, unlike ours, his predictions of our media future were merely a statement of fact. Brave new world indeed.

Other articles from the IAB staff's week of online insights:

• Monday - Kieron Matthews discusses display advertising

• Tuesday - Amy Kean looks to make sense of social media

• Wednesday - Jack Wallington talks video advertising

• Thursday - Laurence Bird outlines the opportunities in the mobile market