I think the game changer in 2011 will be the evolution of the privacy debate. Yesterday we saw the big announcement from Better Advertising and the industry-wide stance on self-regulation of behavioral targeting, which means we're now on the way to seeing how this issue plays itself out.
One potential outcome is that this self-regulatory approach satisfies the government, and consumers. If that’s the case I think we’ll see more rapid adoption of the DSP/Exchange space.
On the other hand, the government may continue to push for more stringent regulation and the implementation of a ‘do not track’ list. Or, we might see that once consumers become more aware of how they’re being targeted that there is a backlash against cross-site behavioral targeting; as a result big brands may simply decide it’s not in their best interest to employ that type of targeting.
In either case, I don’t think the online advertising industry will lose dollars, but the outcome will have a big impact on how online ad dollars get distributed. In the first scenario the winners are the DSPs and third-party data providers; in the second scenario the winners are traditional online publishers.
there seems to be an admittance to poor behavior when campaigning ones targeted audience, since the beginning of evolution, sneakiness is the cause of clumsy campaigns. Honesty and clever creativity is less expensive and the ROE is huge. Traditional online publishers simply because, who else?
[...] I’d like to talk about privacy. Ad Tech Blogs recently posted an article predicting this topic to be the 2011 digital influencer, and I’d have [...]