Online advertising is a big business. The evidence:
AdTech is a massive conference -- the New York version last week was at the Hilton on Avenue of Americas. The exhibition hall took up thousands of square feet on three floors and it was packed full of people. Inside there, you would never have imagined that there was an economic melt down outside.
AdTech New York is only one of many AdTech conferences taking place during the year. They are also held monthly March to November rotating through an impressive list of cities: San Francisco, Sydney, Paris, Miami, Singapore, Tokyo and London. Not only is this big business, it's international.
Despite the fact that Google Ads seem to dominate the market, there are 350 ad networks. That's a big marketplace -- sustaining giants like Google ads and hundreds of others.
$25 billion was spend on digital ads this year.
The speakers at AdTech -- in fact everyone I've spoken to in the ad and marketing world -- is expecting spending on print and conventional media to shrink. But they all expect the digital spend to continue to grow.
Unilever spends 2% of $2.2 billion ad budget on digital.
The big brands are doing very cool things in the digital space.
Nike is offering a virtual soccer bootcamp.
Japanese clothing company Qlo has the very strange and cool Uniqlock.
Companies like Unilever, Kraft, Saturn, IKEA and MacDonalds are running digital campaigns with such things as web series, casual games, utilities and ARGs.
Representatives from the brands and their agencies say they are looking for the innovative and new.
Digital marketing is proving successful:
The Uniqlock has had 180 million viewers in 240 countries.
The diamond Shreddies campaign claims 800000 views for their videos on YouTube.
Many feel Obama's use of the digital space had a huge impact on his campaign. In fact, he is AdAge's marketer of the year. His Yes We Can video shows 13 million views on YouTube alone. He has a 125,000 followers on Twitter and a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg and LinkedIn and many more.
Resources:
AdGabber, a social network for the ad biz.
