TubeMogul, which distributes web video to multiple sites and collects viewing data, has introduced the “TubeMogul Marketplace” - a service that aims to match advertisers with video producers.

The TubeMogul Marketplace allows advertisers to review demographic data collected by TubeMogul in order to find appropriate web video from among TubeMogul’s 200 or so web video producers. Advertisers can then contact video producers and negotiate appropriate licensing arrangements.

TubeMogul is offering the service as a value-add for its producers and doesn’t plan to make any money from any matches made or deals transacted.

Source: Michael Learmonth, “TubeMogul Launches Web Video ‘Marketplace’ For Advertisers”, Silicon Alley Insider, September 4, 2008

JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan had lowered his 2008 and 2009 forecasts for online display ads, forecasting that advertisers will shift more dollars away from display and to search and performance-based advertising.

According to Mr Khan, U.S. display ads will grow by 14 percent to reach $8.2 billion this year, down from his original forecast of 20 percent growth and $8.6 billion in sales. He expects display advertising in 2009 to grow by 16 percent and reach $9.4 billion, down from his earlier forecast of 17 percent and $10 billion.

Although Khan believes online advertisers will devote more of their budgets to performance-based advertising, he also predicts growth in search to also decline somewhat. He expects search advertising to grow by 27 percent in 2008, rather than the 32 percent he previously predicted. Presumably this is due to advertisers reducing their overall online budgets.

Source: Michael Learmonth, “JP Morgan Cuts 2008 Outlook For Online Display Ads”, Silicon Alley Insider, September 4, 2008

Comcast is challenging the ruling made by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that prevented the company from slowing down web traffic from peer-to-peer file sharing applications such as BitTorrent.

Last month, the FCC voted 3-2 that treating certain types of web traffic differently infringed “net neutrality” principles, under which all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

Source: Michael Learmonth, “Comcast Sues FCC For Right To Limit Bandwidth Hogs”, Silicon Alley Insider, September 4, 2008

While classified advertising revenues at newspapers are in decline, they’re booming online.

Makes sense - local advertisers are moving their ads to where their prospects are. And such prospects are spending less time reading newspapers and more time online.

Case in point: leading classifieds site, Craigslist. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster recently said that in June housing ads on Craigslist were up 85 percent over those in June last year, while rental ads were up 120 percent year-on-year, and real estate ads as a whole were up 70 percent year-on-year.

Craigslist receives around 50 million unique visitors and 12 billion page views per month. Not bad for a service that began in 2000 with one PC running Linux, handling 6 million page views per month.

Sources: Michael Learmonth, “Craigslist CEO: Our Real Estate Listings Are Booming”, Silicon Alley Insider, July 25, 2007

There are more indications that spending on Internet advertising is growing… at the expense of spending on traditional media advertising.

Last year, the top 100 U.S. advertisers in the U.S. - responsible for about 41 percent of total advertising spending in that country - pulled about $1 billion from their TV and newspaper ad budgets and poured it into online advertising.

According to Ad Age, the top 100 advertisers’ 2007 expenditure on TV, print, radio and web advertising was flat, growing just 0.3 percent over the previous year to reach $61.3 billion. However, since online display ad expenditure rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion, a significant chunk of ad spending was transferred from  traditional media to online media.

Meanwhile, prominent search engine marketing firm, SearchIgnite – which has about $350 million in annual billings - says that in the second quarter of 2008 its clients increased their search marketing expenditure by around 10 percent over the previous quarter. The increase in spend was apportioned evenly across each search network - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.

Does anyone seriously see this trend reversing? While economic conditions may well temper advertising spending in general, I can’t see anything other than online advertising continuing to erode traditional media advertising.

Perhaps the only ones who are (and should be) doing more offline advertising (and marketing in general) are Internet marketers!

Sources: Erick Schonfeld, “Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers”, TechCrunch, June 23, 2007, Bradley Johnson, “Top 100’s Ad-Spend Growth Grinds to Halt”, Ad Age, June 23, 2008, Michael Learmonth, “Search Marketer: Search Spending Up 10% In Q2″, Silicon Alley Insider, June 25, 2008

YouTube has introduced a new policy to allow its content partners to display longer videos.

Specifically aimed at encouraging independent film makers to upload feature films, the file size of such videos may be as large as 1 gigabyte. The move seems to be aimed at keeping people on the site longer, in order for them to be exposed to  more ads.

I wonder where this is headed… If the ad model works for film makers and small (and large) production houses, will we see the advent of “straight to YouTube” movies?

Source: Michael Learmonth, “YouTube Shifts Strategy, Tries Long-Form Video”, Silicon Alley Insider, June 18, 2008