A tribute to John Lennon

Before I get to the Lennon part:

I've been meaning to say thank you to Jeff Lanctot and his team @ Avenue A for the wonderful report they released recently on the 2008 Digital Media Outlook.

I figured re-distribution might be a good(albeit selfish) step to acknowledgment, so here's a graph that summarized where ad dollars are, and where they're going.



Points to be noted:

1) Portal advertising, which grew 100% between 2005-2006, grew only by 7% between 2006-2007. Ouch.
2) Vertical advertising, which grew 15% between 2005-2006, grew a good 42% between 2006-2007.

What does that mean?
1) Fragmentation happened very quickly. Almost too quick for most portals/destinations to react. People found relevance elsewhere, and just..sort of..left.
I don't read Yahoo! news anymore. I get on iGoogle, read my personalized news across all topics, and then head on to wherever my news appetite for the day seems to get satiated best(via Google, of course).


2) As fragmented markets take shape and coagulate, the resulting verticals/niches present highly target-able audiences for advertisers.
I follow headlines, not newspapers or brands. If I see a news item that's appealing, then that's where I go.
Advertisers want to be where I go, because that's their biggest clue to knowing what's appealing to me.

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It's all very beautiful. We're seeing the dots getting connected all over again. The world hasn't grown. We're all just getting a little closer to each other. Without suffocating each other.

This is a new world...a new dimension if you will.

Time means nothing, perspective means everything, context is infinite, connectivity tends towards perfection, a space has no definition...only opportunity, collaboration is survival, open is naked is beautiful, persona is situational...not representative, everything adds up, and spam is about to die.

John Lennon is missing out.