Interesting blog post by Robert Scoble. He reckons blogging and social media are killing trade shows. Because tech companies are getting the attention - and return on investment - they want from online launches, they are increasingly reluctant to participate in trade shows.

Some companies are reducing their presence (and spend); others are deciding not to go altogether. And Robert Scoble expects the trade show exodus to continue in 2009. And it will probably be a significant exodus, given the economic climate.

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eMarketer has issued its hit predictions for 2009. Here are some of its forecasts for the new year:

• Despite the economic downturn, video ad spending will rise by 45 percent to reach $850 million.
• Search marketing spending will increase by 14.9 percent to reach $12.3 billion.
• Total U.S. Internet ad spending will increase by 8.9 percent to $25.7 billion. This will be the lowest year-over-year increase for online advertising to date, but will still constitute a higher growth rate than most other media.
• Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by just 4 percent as a consequence of the economic downturn.
• E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Both MySpace and Facebook will expand their self-serve advertising systems to allow members and businesses to buy and sell products and services.
• Smaller and niche social networks will face difficulties - with some failing or being bought by others in the face of declining ad revenues. Corporate and brand-focused social networks will fail to gain (or lose) traction and likely close altogether.
• Twitter will be acquired and its acquirer will use its infrastructure to offer targeted marketing and analytics to advertisers.
• Television will fragment further and this, combined with lower viewership and lower ad spending will increase the pressure on networks to test new business models, including offering more online content.
• Online ad-supported video will grow, especially as YouTube expands its offering of full-length television programs.

Source: eMarketer, “eMarketer’s Predictions for 2009,” eMarketer, December 16, 2008

While more and more people are using social networking sites, eMarketer has revised downward its projections for U.S. social network ad spending. The research firm now expects advertisers to spend $1.2 billion on social networks in 2008, down from its previous projection of $1.4 billion.

Similarly, eMarketer expects spending to be $1.3 billion in 2009, down from its previously forecast of $1.8 billion. eMarketer attributes the lower numbers to the recession and slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace.

eMarketer has also revised downward its forecasts for MySpace and Facebook. Previously, eMarketer expected MySpace to earn $755 million and Facebook to earn $265 million in U.S. ad spending this year. Now, eMarketer expects MySpace to earn $585 million and Facebook $210 million.

Source: eMarketer, “U.S. Social Network Ad Spending Growth Lowered,” eMarketer, December 10, 2008

One of the great appeals of Internet marketing is the ability to test, track and ultimately improve results. The Internet is a direct response marketer’s ‘dream marketing medium.’

But what about social media? Can you measure results across blogs… social networks such as Facebook and MySpace… micro-blogging sites such as Twitter… and other such media?

According to Dave Evans, author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” and contributor to The ClickZ Network, the answer is emphatically YES. And there are a variety of tools - free and paid - to help you do so.

Before you do anything, though, it’s important to measure what’s happening NOW. Once you have a baseline, you can then monitor and evaluate the impact of various initiatives.

Evans points to a number of tools for measuring social content, i.e. the ‘conversations’ about you that are currently taking place across the Internet. Free tools include Google Alerts and my recent favorite, URLFan.

You can set up Google Alerts, for example, to send you emails notifying you of mentions of your brand, website, name, product, etc in Google. But don’t just let them come into your inbox. Dave Evans recommends tracking the results in a spreadsheet. That way you can monitor changes over time.

Paid tools such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics, TNS Cymfony and Umbria are ‘turnkey’ systems that remove the requirement for you to manually record and track alerts.

In between the free tools and the turnkey, paid options, are paid tools such as Techrigy’s SM2, Radian6, and KD Paine’s DIY Dashboard from KD Paine. These allow you to finetune your intelligence searches over time and largely automate the reporting process.

Evans, however, suggests starting with manually monitoring the conversations over a 30 day period. That way you can see what kinds of things are circulating about you, which in turn, can give you an indication of what you need to track and which tool may be best for that.

Once you begin tracking your ’social media impact’ you can also start to look for correlations, trends and patterns. In particular, you might start to see correlations between the level of social media conversations, your search engine rankings, and the level of traffic to your website.

And that’s just for starters. Once you have a system for tracking your social media impact, the next step is to use the insights gained from tracking to work out how to INFLUENCE that social media impact.

Source: Dave Evans, “Social Media: Why Measurement Is Key,” ClickZ, December 10, 2008

Think you can use social networking sites such as Flickr to boost your search engine rankings? Think again. Not only has Flickr implemented no-follow tags to prevent ‘misuse’ of its service, but it has gone so far as to remove an account one search engine optimization (SEO) contractor created for his client, FramesDirect.

As reported by The ClickZ Network, Flickr emailed SEO contractor Richard Burckhardt, to say that his account was taken down because it violated Flickr’s terms of service. Flickr’s guidelines say that the service is for personal use only and that anyone found selling products or services through the photostream will have their account terminated.

According to Burckhardt the account was removed with no discussion, no warning, and no chance to rectify the problem or even to retrieve the photos.

Of course, that doesn’t quite explain why other accounts - which are also arguably for commercial purposes - remain on Flickr…

The lesson here is that social networks have cottoned-on to Internet marketers using their sites for search engine optimization (SEO) and promotional purposes. Some of them don’t like it and, like Flickr, are doing something about it. It may not seem ‘fair’ but they own the sites and can therefore make the rules.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the account Richard Burckhardt created was relatively innocuous. But this is an example of what happens when others i.e. ‘rogue marketers’ don’t simply take advantage of marketing opportunities but abuse them to the point where others can’t use them at all.

Source: Kate Kaye, “Flickr Ban Raises Question of What’s Commerce, What’s Not”, The ClickZ Network, December 8, 2008

Heard of Power.com? Well, you’re probably going to hear a lot more about it in the weeks and months to come. Essentially, Power.com is a platform that allows you to communicate across all your favorite social networking sites from ONE place.

Power.com works like this. You register with your preferred social networks. Then you use your Power.com home page to view all the content from those various social sites - friends, chats, emails, images, etc. You can then use Power to send and receive messages, change your profile, and update your friends or followers list… and do so across all your social networks.

Power.com currently works with Facebook, Hi5, MSN, MySpace and Orkut, and is scheduled to work with LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Skype within the next few months.

Given its, um, power, you can probably see why Power already has 5 million registered users.

Of course, it helps to have, among other things, a link to Power on every message that is sent via the Power.com platform!

Even so, it’s selling proposition is so compelling that the company’s vision of 30 million registered users by the end of 2009 is probably realistic.

The company also has some serious backing - it has received $8 million in Series A funding from investors including venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and tech visionary and entrepreneur Esther Dyson.

Based in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Power.com is a privately held company with 70 employees. It’s opening new offices in San Francisco, California and Hyderabad, India.

Source: Lidija Davis, “Social Inter-Networking with Power,” ReadWriteWeb, November 30, 2008

A study by Synovate brings into question the idea that men and women aged 18-to-24-year-old are ‘immune’ to marketing messages or brands. In fact, people in this age group are quite enthusiastic about brands that are relevant to them.

Synovate’s June-July 2008 survey of young adults found that 28 percent of respondents had talked about a major brand on a discussion forum, 23 percent had put brand-related content on their instant messaging (IM) profile, and 19 percent had added branded content to their homepage or social networking site.

Furthermore, nearly 50 percent had clicked on online ads, and 18 percent had accessed brand and product information through a portal. Meanwhile, nearly 25 percent of 18-to-24 year olds had uploaded ads to social networks and online video sites in the past month.

Source: eMarketer, “Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant?” eMarketer, November 20, 2008

Zedo has released a new, self-service platform that allows marketers to create their own social networking ads.

Essentially, Zedo will allow marketers to purchase ad templates, including fully skinnable interfaces, which can be modified to suit different social networks. Marketers can purchase text ads, image ads or create unique flash-based ads using a drag and drop tool.

In addition, marketers can use Zedo’s sequencing tool to choose the sequence of ads seen by consumers. There is also an an ad hoc reporting system to enable marketers to view information from all campaigns running on all relevant networks.

Source: Kristina Knight, “New platform enables self-serve social ads”, BizReport, November 10, 2008

MySpace is working on a system to allow MySpace users to exchange virtual gift products and make payments within the social network. In particular, the billing and payment system is aimed at enabling MySpace developers to charge for their MySpace apps.

Facebook, which also has its own virtual gifts (not yet open to developers) is also rumored to be working on a payments system.

No-one seems to be talking about it… but what if a payment system created by MySpace - or even Facebook - takes off? Is it possible that by socializing their hundreds of millions of users into using such a payment system… the next step is to enable its use beyond their social networks and in the Internet as a whole. Watch out PayPal.

Source: Erick Schonfeld, “Making Money On MySpace: Payments and Virtual Gifts Coming Soon”, TechCrunch, November 7, 2008

United States President-elect Barack Obama spent $7.97 million on online advertising before November. The Obama campaign managers spent it on search engine marketing, ad networks, social networks, local TV sites, newspaper sites and even NBA.com.

Think that’s a lot of money? Well, let’s put it into perspective. Obama spent over half that budget, i.e. $4 million, on one 30 minute television commercial in October.

Google got nearly half of Obama’s online budget, with nearly $3.5 million going into Google search. Yahoo search got just $673,000 in October.

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Obama’s Online Spend: Actually Tiny,” Silicon Alley Insider, November 6, 2008