Display Advertising Comeback

Online marketing spending trends are just unpredictable. Not many years ago, the banner ad was deemed dead while search advertising and optimization was crowned King (the same King as in “Content is King”).

Now, display advertising is back in the game, and actually poised to trump search marketing, if you’re to take Microsoft’s word for it.
See:
Ballmer Says 25% of Revenue will come from Advertising
and
Microsoft Says Search Ads Will Shift Elsewhere

Naturally, Microsoft has reasons to spin current trends this way – and hope it holds true. But successful search players like Google and Yahoo (and AOL) are also looking beyond search for greener pastures, evidenced by their recent series of acquisitions.

What’s great about this trend is that in the new world of display advertising, content is still King, this time on two levels:
1 – There is so much new ad inventory due to the sudden rise of user generated content.
2 – Display advertising technology is getting ‘smarter’ through technologies like behavioral targeting, but advertisers are also starting to act like publishers, realizing that the task of advertising in a Web 2.0 world job is not to (just) sell, but to persuade customers via information. This bodes well for customers who may actually find banner advertising, relevant and informational…(shocking!).

At the risk of sounding self-serving, this trend is also great news for my company, Linkstorm, where we believe that the best way to improve effectiveness of online advertising, is to make ads more useful to the customer. We believe that offering customers a chance to control their interaction with an ad – and use that ad to circle in on what’s really important to them, means that both advertisers and customers get what they want.

Anyway, display advertising is back with a vengeance!