23 Musings

A report has been released by Anderson Analytics as the results of a survey of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (a 1,700 strong network of marketers at VP level or higher). The survey asked what marketing concepts these executives thought were going to be the top trends and concepts in 2008.

Worryingly, when asked which marketing concepts they felt were going to be most important the second highest answer turned out to be SEO!

Now, I don't know whether marketers are unsure what search engine optimisation is or perhaps this was a particularly 'offline' group of marketers, but SEO is already hugely important and in my eyes if you haven't grasped that yet then it's a bit late. Saying that it will be the second most important concept next year is amazing to me. It's been part of my life for 12 years and is really just part of the routine I go through for any digital project.

Here's the rest of the list:
If you had to ask me what some of the concepts I thought were important for next year were (in digital), I'd say:

• Offline/online translation (getting your offline campaigns translated in a seamless manner onto digital media, something that really isn't being done very well at the moment)
• Viral (campaigns should always be thought of as viral if they touch the web)
• Widgets (cross pollination of marketing campaigns online using widgets)
• Social media (yes, it's huge this year, but next year should see it mature and the launch of OpenSocial will make it more important than ever)
• Banners (controversial one this but we are now at a stage where banners should become more like widgets and really start to become properly engaging, whether this will happen I'm not sure as most agencies who design banners aren't particularly forward thinking)

Underpinning all of those, and every other online marketing concept, should be SEO.

What do you think the key concepts of 2008 will be?

The European Union regulators have said they will be thoroughly investigating the Google DoubleClick deal after their preliminary investigations found that the deal could raise competition concerns. A deadline of 2nd April 2008 has been set to make a final recommendation.

Google has said it will work with the Commission to demonstrate the value a deal like this will give to publishers and advertisers alike.

With all the other deals happening in online advertising I'm beginning to think they should just let this deal go through. Every major internet player has had a deal go through with an ad network apart from Google, and with the likes of Facebook now launching advertising networks it is actually beginning to feel like Google is the one being hurt by this being stalled for so long.

I wonder whether Google might pull out of the deal if they can get OpenSocial moving quickly and use the demographic, social and behavioural data that they will garner from it to create their own network (or extend Adwords/Adsense)?