Many marketers had predicted that 2007 was going to be the year that this advertising option would break through to the mainstream, but Mobile Advertising has still not begun to realize its huge potential. Slow growth of high speed networks and lack of an overall mobile internet audience have slowed the mass adoption by advertisers.

The recent introduction of flat-rate mobile plans and lower cost smart phones should help to expand the mobile phone user audience and increase mobile ad spending levels. According to eMarketer, worldwide mobile ad spending will grow from 2.7 billion in 2007 to over 19 billion in 2012. Text message (SMS) campaigns will likely account for the majority of the spend, with advertisers using the “walk before you run” approach before testing more complex campaigns with Mobile Search and Display formats.

Consumer costs continue to drop and mobile technology is improving, but there are still obstacles to overcome with mobile carrier constraints, user privacy, multiple ad formats, campaign tracking, and the unawareness of what the space can provide to an advertiser. 2008 probably wont be the year that Mobile Ads hit the mainstream, but its a good bet that Mobile Advertising will eventually rival Search Advertising.

Integration between Television and the Internet is one step closer. The Internet has always been a medium for people to get what they want, when they want it. It is a place where people proactively look for information and/or products. Television, on the other hand, has always been more of a “lean-back experience”. A place for people to relax, watch their favorite show, and often get bombarded with commercials (at least before the fabulous invention of TIVO and DVR). Television has never been recognized as place to proactively gather information, until now.

Samsung seems to have found a bridge between the Internet and Television through a device the company is calling See’N’Search. The new tool allows you to access the internet without using a keyboard or a PC. This new tool automatically pulls content from the Internet to match whatever television show you are watching. According to Mashable, “The new See’N'Search is a set-top box that reads the closed captions on a television show, as well as listens for keywords, to search for related Internet articles to the content you are currently watching. Say you’re watching the news and they do a story about the President; links to information on the President will appear at the bottom of the screen. For programs such as scripted shows, the system will pull up information on the actors as well as whatever they are discussing in the show. Furthermore, while it may be annoying to have information covering the bottom portion of your screen, you can instead choose to have any requested info sent to handheld devices or a computer connected to the local network.”

With any new technology, the question then becomes, will consumers find this tool useful or annoying? I am guilty of multi-tasking, which is why I am torn on how I feel about this product. When I get home from work, I often use the internet to search for a restaurant nearby, while using my DVR to watch my favorite daytime television show, and usually chatting on the phone with family or friends about my day. Multi-tasking is something that I am used to. Would this new tool from Samsung relieve some of my activities at night, or would it become more of an annoyance than a useful tool? While I am trying to relax and watch TV, do I really want to be bombarded with search results at the bottom of my screen? Also, would this type of technology be a fit for every type of television show? For example, I understand how this technology would be useful when watching a news clip or television about the President and/or any topic he or she is talking about, but what if I was watching “Everybody Loves Raymond”? What type of information would be made available to me? I am assuming articles and video clips related to the actors on the show, but truthfully, I don’t really care to learn more about that? I watch “Everybody Loves Raymond” for a good laugh, not to learn everything about the actors in the show.

Either way, the news is pretty exciting! With this being one of the first steps toward integration between the Internet and Television, it seems that the digital media space is joining together to try and make our lives a little bit easier and more connected. I am excited to learn more about this new technology and how it will evolve in the near future.

Microsoft has won the battle with Google and Yahoo to invest in Facebook. The two companies announced on October 24^th that Microsoft will invest $240 million for a 1.6% equity stake in Facebook, a price that values the social networking site at $15 billion. Last year, Microsoft started supplying banner ads for Facebook in the United States through 2011. The new deal secures Microsoft as Facebook’s primary advertising partner and expands its reach to Facebook’s international users, while splitting the revenue.

Marketers are expected to spend about $1.2 billion worldwide on social-networking this year and this number could grow to $3.6 billion by 2011. With 50 million active users, Facebook remains second behind MySpace with over 110 million active users, but Facebook’s audience has been growing at a far more rapid clip during the past year. This is in part due to Facebook’s technology, which has enabled it to distinguish itself from rival social networks like MySpace. In May of this year, it began inviting other companies and outside developers to create tools for the site and share in advertising revenues. Thousands of applications have been developed since, which enable users to personalize pages in various ways. It is also believed that the company is building an operating system that exists on the web instead of on hard drives or personal computers.

Social Networking sites allow internet users to connect with friends and share information such as photos, videos and music. Microsoft plans to tap information on Facebook’s users and will have the ability to offer more targeted ads. Social networking provides the advertising world with something beyond basic demographics. It shows how people interact. Facebook is favored by some over MySpace because it is based on who you really are and who your friends really are. Myspace is not based on authentic identities. Marketers want to reach the real you and not the “fantasy you” that lives onMySpace and uses a photo of a model.