I believe these emerging trends in advertising and content marketing will change how we do business online well beyond 2010. The adoption of these trends may carry over into 2011 and some have already started to take shape.

1.     Real time = Real Opportunities. The digital advertising space will evolve quickly around real time response for everything. (Analytics, Targeting, Optimization, Creative, Social Monitoring, Content Creation, Publishing) and will push M&A activity in the industry especially during the second half of the year as leadership is established by some of the emerging solution providers in the space.  It won’t be “The Matrix” online but it will have an interesting side affect, fewer ads mixed in with the targeted content. Spam ad formats will be pushed out due to more effective integrated solutions. Social status stream ads (Twitter/Facebook) will take the place of advertiser spam, momentarily, until the social scene revolts and new ad blocking tools are developed for that purpose.

2.     Ad formats are a changing – already an IAB and Bain study states that media/publishing companies need to offer more compelling advertising slots than the standard ones that are available through most ad networks.

3.     Publishers take control. More publishers will take direct control over their site advertising (AOL, CBS) – they will control the access to their audience and force advertisers to pay more for access to these users and/or users will have to pay something for “premium content” on top publisher sites. To support this publishers will need to invest in tools and people to deliver content centric advertising including analytics, optimization, privacy management, and content campaign management. Vendors, can you say “Digital Agencies”, will appear to service publishers in this capacity.

4.     Optimize or else! Advertisers will stop paying for any display advertising that isn’t optimized or targeted pushing out any ad solution that doesn’t already have abilities flexible support for optimization of content through strong targeting capabilities.

5.     Privacy Impact – Behavioral targeting will continue to have challenges to its adoption by Privacy experts and lawmakers. Targeting solutions will evolve; all will adapt to allow opt-in or management of privacy settings to the individual consumers to counter the push for banning. This will lead to additional product and services that allow management of the privacy settings.

6.     Less means more. Agencies will consolidate as the financial pressure of the switch to digital pushes some more traditional companies out. Those who have the resources to buy smaller digital agencies to stay competitive will grow.

7.     Real Time = Real Issues. The switch to real time will undergo significant turmoil in the New Year as promising early stage technology leaders learn tough lessons on what being real time means to brands and advertising campaigns. The industry will undergo a major shift in approach as this technology evolves and best practices are developed.

8.     Social investment will wane.  As a DIY mentality will push out vendors who are focused on social app development, widgets, and Facebook/Twitter experiences. Vendors focused on social analytics and messaging management will gain further traction. Ecommerce on social sites will have mixed results in the New Year as members of social sites determine what they are willing to do within a social network setting.

9.     Content is king! Again – it always was king from marketing perspective good content draws eyeballs which why we buy media. Now advertisers are learning that if they are going to have any strategy for marketing their brand moving forward it needs to start with a solid content strategy and a calendar that is more editorial in focus. This editorial calendar integrated with a seasonal media buy calendar will help push more dollars online as campaigns demonstrate effectiveness that will be measured through metrics that mirror TV rather than current online metrics.

10.  Where will the money go? Search will still be on top at the end of 2010, but not by as much. Display will be a close second but not the display ad formats we see today.

So thats what I expect to see play out in 2010. All in all a very active year is ahead of us and I’m very excited by many of the prospects.

Do you agree?