By Dave Porter

(AXcess News) Reno - An easy cop out is to do a "top 10 list for 2009" and like many journalists who've picked social networks, iPhone and other gadgets, it would be tempting to lay down something similar.  But with a global recession underway, the web community is experiencing something new - shrinkage.

ComScore revealed that online retail sales during the holiday shopping period from Thanksgiving to December 23 shrank 3% and earlier forecast fourth quarter shrinkage of approximately 4%.  It marked the first time in over seven years online sales had declined.

Online predictions for 2009 cite the death of image ads - Is CPM Dead?

Hardly, say the web mavericks at Cervella, an upstart web intelligence provider.   "While CPM rates at networks such as Tribal Fusion and 24/7 Real Media are noticeably lower since the third-quarter of 2008, the industry is alive and well," notes Cervella.

But the number of image advertisers is down - here again that awful word: shrinkage.  Still, you have to consider where the market is heading in 2009 and while video ads are becoming popular, for image advertisers to consider: a picture's worth a thousand words.  That still holds true, even if the web is seeing fewer advertisers.  But the hog of online smiley faces, Google, who bought DoubleClick last year, is offering image ads as well and that means the top search engine is digging into the market share once held by the major online image ad networks.  Fewer ad dollars to go around means web publishers are the one's suffering for it as a result.

But rich media lives!  You can't count out rollover image ads in predicting web trends for 2009.  They at least still thrive in the popular ad networks, though price points make most ad buyers shy away.  Topping the popularity charts in 2009 may be underlays.  For web publishers these exit pages don't pay much, but for advertisers, it's a cheap alternative to other image advertising and some creative syndicates are being put together that bridge the gap between PR and web advertising; sort of a branding tool gone contextual in using keyword displays as an undertone to delivery or site-specific content.  Cervella predicts underlays will be a hot comer in 2009 in areas relating to corporate and product branding.

Where did all the text ads go?

There is no doubt that in 2008, Google led the market in text link advertising.  And while we predict that Google will continue to hold that lead going into 2009, publishers are grumbling and advertisers are beginning to question the search giant's web morality in having to compete with Google's own sites in ad display and page position.

In Google Adwords Newsletter, November 2008, the search provider wrote:  "For more clicks you can try adding more keywords - and increasing your budget."  But the fact is, what you pay is what you get and often Google Search pages display ads for Google Sites in top positions and you have to go to page two to see multiple advertisers.  Talk about crapping on a customer!

Google's Adwords Site is geared towards creating a bidding war for top positions and if the rates aren't to their satisfaction, they display their own Google Site links.  But publishers aren't benefiting, says Cervella.  Over the last 18 months many Google Adsense publishers have seen their cumulative ad rate (displayed in cpm) drop by as much as 70%.  That's a big hit by any means!  So if publishers really are seeing rates decline, who's getting the premium display?  You do the math...

Yahoo got its butt handed to it in a bucket after seeing Google pull out of a marketing deal after the U.S. government balked at the idea of Google having that much web yardage.  Still, Yahoo text advertising has its own way of cutting off advertisers who don't bid high enough for a keyword term.  The No. 2 search engine still snubs websites in opening up its ad network to more publishers - unless traffic exceeds a certain level.  That's sort of backward thinking, but then Yahoo's never gotten over its Directory model of search listing, so it's no wonder.  We predict that Yahoo will go through some soul-searching changes in 2009 and open up more to search listings (dropping the pay-to-list model) and bringing its network publishing site out into the open.  That could give Google a run for the money.  Cervella says it depends on management changes at Yahoo! corporate.

Other ad networks like Miva are quietly making decisive changes.  Miva's new network platform, whose launch is overdue, is most likely a resource to come in the second quarter of 2009.  Sources inside Miva say frustrations are running deep, awaiting the new platform, but AXcess News was told "the wait is worth it," promising us an inside look into its powerful features for advertisers when its ready to premiere to the marketplace.

Miva has also joined Google and Yahoo in adopting ClickForensics' FactR technology. Click Forensics describes FACTr as, "providing an automated way for advertisers to request reconciliation from ad providers for traffic deemed to be invalid."

Advertisers on the Miva network in the past were punished for sending traffic to pages that displayed Google Adsense.  Adsense, which uses its own crawler technology, blocks Miva ads.  But with Miva joining the top search provider in deploying Click Forensics' FACTr technology, Google will be hard pressed to continue to prejudice Miva traffic.  Time will tell...

Those pesky in-text ads!

Exponential's EchoTopic is wading into in-text ads slowly, handpicking publishers that can provide quality content.  But caution to the wind, visitors have grown wary and in a savvy manner, avoid rolling their mouse over the links.  The popup display that appears often interferes with the actual page content, but Echo Topic's game is different in that relativity counts.  Sort of a champagne approach to in-text advertising that others in the market soured most of the web community from wanting to see.  Still, others are adapting similar technology to show helpful content, such as that found via snap.com, which has partnered with content sources to display maps and other information visitors actually want to see.

Drupal, one of the more popular Content Management Systems available in open source format has modules available for displaying video and other content via popups launched from in-text links.  Other open source CMS providers and individual sites are using in-text links to give visitors access to more information - including the growing popularity of product reviews.  Chitika, a maverick online ad network has developed some impressive display partnerships for its growing publisher community.  AXcess News predicts Chitika will be a top growth pick for innovative ad marketing in 2009.  Chitika is an early adapter of images displayed next to textual ads, making it eye catching as well as a more effective CTR for the network's publishers.  A late-December post in Chitika's blog says: Based upon the more than 500,000,000 ads we served in September to end users who clicked from a search engine to our publishers' sites, Chitika is trending to become the "3rd largest ad serving search engine" behind Google and Yahoo (uniquely we're monetizing the "2nd click").

Click fraud prediction - up or down year?

Click Forensics announced on October 23, 2008 that third-quarter click fraud "hovered around 16%". 

That's down slightly from the 16.2 percent rate reported for both Q2 2008 and Q3 2007.

While the overall click fraud rate was 16 percent, for Google and Yahoo the number's were far worse.

According to Click Forensics, The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.1 percent. That's down from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q2 2008 and the 28.1 percent average click fraud rate reported for Q3 2007.

Botnets continue to plague the web, says Click Forensics.

Traffic from botnets was responsible for 27.6 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q3 2008, Click Forensics reports. That's up from 25.2 percent for Q2 2008.

AXcess News predicts that click fraud will crack the 16% barrier in the fourth-quarter and decline and in 2009, that trend will continue downward but only marginal gains will be made.  Much of the decline comes from something largely unseen in the past - cooperation.  AXcess News predicts that more standardization of acceptable tools like Click Forensics' FACTr will play a bigger role in reducing click fraud.  Someone should tell IAB...

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is promoting more Audience Measurement Guidelines as well as Lead Quality Accountability Best Practices that promises to bring more uniformity to the cooperation between publishers and advertisers.  IAB appears to be moving towards more standardization and hopefully, tools like FACTr will become recognized and more adaptable.  Unfortunately, Click Forensics isn't making the code available to the open source community.

Open Source - dead or alive?

The open source community thrived in 2008 and AXcess News predicts that in 2009 the web will go through an "open source revolution" of sorts.  We credit much of that to Google's browser and how mobile providers have been going down on one knee to adapt it.  Mobile computing is one area where open source has attracted more developers, probably due to the popularity of mobile web activity.  Mobile internet access is a big part of 2009's growth market, though more of the web development community is shifting to the popular content management systems offered by Drupal, Joomla and Xoops for running websites.

Social is king - sort of

Sure, twitter and the rest have their place, but the problems facing the larger social networks over privacy and the continuing problem in policing what's posted is a growing issue. AXcess News predicts that social networks will face a regulatory dilemma in 2009 that could cause the user-base to shrink, at least in the US market.  Advertisers are still trying to figure out how best take advantage of these people piles online.  But the nose-in-the-air resistance of users has something to do with that - they just don't want advertising clutter thrown in their way.

PC use - laptop or desktop?

Recently, laptop sales outpaced desktops for the first time as more wifi capability became available, features and battery life added to laptop market growth, but in 2009, PC sales will slow worldwide, AXcess News predicts.  The slowdown will be due to the global recession.

All-in-all, 2009 will be wildly difficult to predict, though it appears that shrinking markets will go far to induce greater cooperation in the online marketplace.  We hope all of you find success in this New Year despite the effects of this global recession.