comScore released a new study today examining the effects of display advertising in the European market—and it’s pretty dang impressive. The study (well, actually, report based on more than 20 studies) indicates that, despite minimal clicks on the ads themselves, “those exposed to online ad campaigns in Europe were 72 percent more likely to visit the advertiser’s website and 94 percent more likely to conduct a trademark search query on the advertiser’s brand, compared to a control group of similar Internet users who were not exposed to the campaigns.”

These figures are pretty staggering—especially when compared to US figures, which comScore reports as “an average lift of 49 percent in site visitation and 40 percent in trademark search queries across hundreds of ad effectiveness studies.” The European lift effects were most significant during the first week after exposure, but didn’t drop off dramatically.

comScore Director of Marketing Solutions Mike Shaw said in the press release,

These results help illustrate how online advertising works. Despite the long-held obsession with using clicks to measure campaign performance – which reflect only the immediate impact of an ad — the comScore studies demonstrate that the Internet is clearly effective as a latent brand-building medium. Europeans appear to be particularly receptive to online advertising, and whether it’s due to better creative, less ad clutter, or greater receptivity to online ads, the implication for brand advertisers is clear: ignore online as a brand-building channel at your own peril.

And I guess it also shows that it pays to know before you go . . . ad shopping.

What do you think? Why might Europeans be so influenced by display ads?

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Eyeblaster released a study yesterday showing that “display ads stimulate search by increasing the speed at which people searching enter the purchase funnel,” reports MediaPost. The study examined over 1300 search and display campaigns over a 15 month period.

They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.

And this wasn’t just in a single industry: Eyeblaster looked at more than 200 advertisers in over 20 verticals. 72% of conversions resulted from display advertising, while 23% of the conversions were a direct result of the search channel and 5% were the result of display ads that were followed by a search.

Eyeblaster Principal Analyst Ariel Geifman says that display can thus be used to enhance search and reach a greater audience. “Since search is down the funnel, you need more prospects in the intent-to-purchase phase,” he says. He also notes that display scales more easily than search.

Display may help because search campaigns only show ads to people who’ve shown interest in that subject. Type “digital camera” into a search engine and you’ll get digital camera ads. But if you’re browsing the Internet, the random sites you come across won’t know you’re in the market for a digital camera. Display advertising is usually less targeted by intent, but reaches a greater audience across all target demographics.

On the other hand, as MediaPost says:

Search works on the lower parts of the funnel by targeting prospective customers in the consideration stage or in the intent-to-purchase stage and pushes them to complete their purchase. Display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing prospective customers into the funnel by generating awareness for the products or the services.

What do you think? Does display+search help people buy faster?

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Google is re-branding both its DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager products–and it’s all because of some surfing web site that can’t get a grip on its online advertising!

Sheesh!

Well, actually Google just uses a surfing site as an example of just how complicated it can be for publishers to manage their ads without the help of Google. Apparently, we’re all doomed unless we switch to Google’s sophisticated ad platform, so both of its popular programs are getting a makeover–because nothing makes you switch ad platforms like a shiny new logo. Right?

So, DART for Publishers now becomes…

And Google Ad Manager becomes…

Both flavors of the new DFP (DoubleClick for Publishers) get some nifty enhancements, including:

• A new interface that has been completely redesigned to save time and reduce errors.
• Far more detailed reporting and forecasting data to help publishers understand where their revenue is coming from and what ads are most valuable.
• Sophisticated algorithms that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.
• A new, open, public API which enables publishers to build and integrate their own apps with DFP, or integrate apps created for DFP by a growing third-party developer community (apps under development today include sales, order management and workflow tools).
• Integration with the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange’s "dynamic allocation" feature, which maximizes revenue by enabling publishers to open up their ad space to bids from multiple ad networks. Dynamic allocation is described in this document.

All of which looks a little something like this:

The Small Business solution is free and is aimed at those that don’t yet know they need to pay for something like this, while larger publishers will have to break out their corporate check book to use the system.

Now, all we need is a new theme song to go along with the new logos. I’ve got one!

"Who’s down with DFP, yeah you know me!"

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Apparently, ads on social networks aren’t working out too well.

While this is not anything we didn’t already know, it must be disheartening for Facebook, MySpace et al, to learn that pinning their revenue growth on display ads may be a tough row to hoe.

It’s not a completely ugly picture, according to eMarketer, ads on social media networks will gain a 5.5% share of all online ad spending, but…

That’s up from 5 percent in 2008, the stats released Thursday say. The good news is that, unlike some other sectors of the ad world, it’s not shrinking–but it’s also not growing exponentially by any means. After plunging from a 61 percent rate of growth in 2008 to 12 percent in 2009, the rate of growth is projected to crawl back up to 14 percent this year and stay about the same at 13 percent next year.

MySpace is to blame for most of the stagnation–its own ad revenues have fallen–and it doesn’t help that Facebook is cutting back on its ad serving as well.

Of course, the news isn’t quite so depressing for social networking advertisers. Social networks still make up around 22% of all online display impressions, it’s just that they are dirt cheap–hence not being a bigger slice of the ad spend pie.

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Ask’s parent company IAC posted $1B in losses largely because it wrote down the value of its search business. But, says the AP, this is actually good news for the online ad market (and not because a competitor is about to get out of the market)—because IAC didn’t do as badly as expected.

No, because it beat estimates by 2¢ per share, a nine-figure loss “offered the latest indication that the online advertising market is improving,” as the AP says. IAC investors seemed to agree, since it the stock jumped four percent after the results were posted.

In the most recent quarter IAC took a $991.9 million impairment charge to account for decreased projections for revenue and profit growth at IAC’s search properties, which include such Web sites as Ask.com and Dictionary.com.

However, there was some true good news in the report as well. Their search business (Ask, Citysearch, etc.) saw increased revenue (up 3%)—the first increase all year. And overall revenue was up, too—an increase of 5% to $367.2 million, beating analyst projections by 8%.

What do you think? Is this good news for the industry bad news for IAC, or good/bad news all around?

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Well, since Google’s Super Bowl ad has signaled that it is in trouble by sending some kind of message that there is fear in the air (c’mon people relax it’s not the big deal you may think it is), what does a company that is obviously reeling on its heels look to do? Find other ways to make money of course.

Now I do not believe that Google is reeling at all. I don’t think that their Super Bowl ad is evidence of anything other than the fact that they could use an already created and packaged message to reach a large audience when their competition wasn’t. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you really think that the cost of that ad is of any consequence to Google’s bottom line? I suspect they figured they could smoke the crappy ads for chips and beer with a simple message and create buzz worth more than $ 3 mil. Mission accomplished.

Google does, however, need to figure out other ways to generate cash and display seems to be the next big thing. Business Week reports

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company’s businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he’ll deliver on that prediction.

Display ads are likely to contribute a little more than $1 billion, or about 4% of Google’s (GOOG) total sales this year—an increase of as much 40% over last year—say analysts, including Doug Anmuth at Barclays Capital. That marks an important threshold for Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which makes most of its sales from ads placed alongside search results and which has been criticized for not getting more revenue from other businesses. Demand for display ads, which include marketing messages in videos and banner ads adorning Web pages, may rise faster this year than for search-related ads, according to eMarketer.

About $700 million of that number should come from YouTube while the remaining will come out of the DoubleClick operations that are gaining momentum. There seems to be a new surge in display ad money that is coming over to the web from TV advertisers. I guess they hadn’t heard about the effectiveness concerns regarding the ads but hey if you have blown a lot on TV ads already it shows you don’t pay real close attention to things . Google has rolled out its Google Insight offering, though, to help understand everything

Google is trying to help advertisers better measure the effectiveness of display ads. “One of the challenges we put to ourselves was: ‘What are the ways a brand advertiser would look to measure [ad impact]?’,” Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business says. The result: Campaign Insights, a tool developed over a year by dozens of Google engineering teams around the world before it was released in December.

Hair-care company Regis was one of the first to test Campaign Insights. It ran banner ads for Hair Club For Men across hundreds of Google’s partner sites while Campaign Insights tracked the number of people who had seen the ads and then performed related Web searches. “Display [advertising] drives searches and Web site visits,” says Luke Hubbard, vice-president of Beverly Hills (Calif.)-based Integrated Media Solutions, the ad agency that coordinated the campaign for Regis. “We knew that effect was there before, but now we are able to quantify it.” Impressed by the results, Regis increased spending on display ads for the brand in 2010, and Integrated Media Solutions has signed up seven other clients eager to tap the analytics.

Ahh, analytics. You mean the ability to actually track whether what you are doing is truly working or not? Those crazy kids over in Mountain View think they should provide something that measures the effectiveness of display ads and now they are going to try to sell more because of their innovation. Wow.

Is Google serious about this? Apparently serious enough to actually have real Google employees venture out and talk to live human beings. In other words they are recognizing that this type of sale requires service and not automation. I had to chuckle a little at this last quote regarding the idea of Google employees venturing out and soiling their good name with the general population.

To succeed in display, Google has also had to hone its ability to market products through a people-friendly sales force. In search, Google has tended to rely more on the technical effectiveness of its products, analysts say. “Advertising is a lot of hand-holding and schmoozing,” says analyst Greg Sterling. “Historically, Google has not been good on managing the people side.”

That’s changing, says Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior vice-president of brand communications for hotel chain Hyatt. She says Google has begun regularly sending sales reps to her Chicago offices. “When they develop new search tools or new advertising tools, they bring them to us and present them in a usable way,” says Curtis-McIntyre.

Now, when Google understands that people also like to be visited when there isn’t something to sell then we can say that they get it. You know…..the R word. No, not Revenue! They get that one real good! It’s the other R word……Relationship. When they understand relationships then they will have something.

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What do you know? Dynamic Logic’s 2009 Ad Reaction (PDF) survey shows that consumers may not hate social media ads after all. A series of surveys took a look at the popularity of social networking as well as ad reception across various media.

The December 2009 survey of 2000 US adults found that 59% were involved in social networking and another 16% were interested, but hadn’t tried it yet. (Email was tops with 95% actively participating and 2% interested.) The same survey asked for users’ attitudes toward advertising on various media. The top two positive responses (which I assume were along the lines of “excellent” and “good”) were reported—and social media ads were on-par with search ads:

• Opt-in email: 32%
• Online: 24%
• Online search: 24%
• Social media/networking: 22%
• Online video: 22%
• Advergames: 17%
• Non-opt-in email: 8%

But really, that’s kind of a tricky metric. If the survey had a scale of 1-5, with then we’re leaving out the people who have a neutral opinion of advertising. On the other hand, if it’s a four-point scale, that means 78% of those surveyed had a negative opinion of social media/networking ads. :\

They also asked about ad recall. Funny ads were the best remembered, with 74% claiming they remember funny ads (I remember funny ads, too, but I don’t remember what they’re selling all the time), and 53% said they remembered relevant ads. And before we talk about ad blindness, 58% of Facebook users said they’d noticed advertising on the site (above the reported MarketNorm of 39%). 70% of Facebook users (1150 surveyed), Twitter users (397 surveyed) and MySpace users (906 surveyed) would be willing to accept more advertising on those sites if it kept the service free.

What do you think? Will you increase your advertising on social media sites, or work to make your creative funnier and targeting more relevant? Do you agree with the findings of these surveys?

via

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If you’ve used Gmail, you’ve probably noticed the ads running along the right-hand side of the screen when viewing an email. And you’ve probably noticed that these ads . . . well, sometimes they’re not to relevant to you, the email, or . . . pretty much anything else.

Gmail is admitting their shortcoming—and they’re working to make this better. Now, instead of serving only marginally relevant ads beside your emails, they’ll go back and look at the last email you viewed and use those ads again. (Because they worked so well the first time, when you were actually thinking about that topic?)

On the Gmail blog, Google explains:

[S]ometimes, there aren’t any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you’ll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let’s say you’re looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren’t any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.

Of course, Google is also quick to reassure: this process is fully automated, and no humans are ever reading your email to match up ads. No advertisers are ever given your information. You’re safe.

As always, for visual learners, Google has a video:

In all, I suppose ads that are more relevant to users are always a good thing. I don’t really expect click through rates to go up, though, since it seems like most Gmail users are probably already pretty ad blind (and it’s only the truly irrelevant ones that catch my attention in the first place, ).

What do you think? Will this net more revenue for Google?

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Google must know something that we don’t. Why else would they be SO open in their new move toward transparency as to allow for extensions on Chrome that, gulp, block the very lifeblood of their money printing operation? Well, considering the market share that Chrome currently has (around 40 million users) and the mindset of someone likely to use (or even know about) this extension the thought of this kind of ‘allowance’ is probably bigger than the reality.

The New York Times reports

In a manifesto-like e-mail message sent last month to all Google employees, Jonathan Rosenberg, a senior vice president for product management, told them to commit to greater transparency and open industry standards. Rather than hoard knowledge to exploit it, he wrote in “The Meaning of Open,” share it and watch Google and the entire Internet prosper.

The resulting openness is allowing for ad blockers as extensions but this decision did not happen without a Mountain View trip to the revenue mountaintop for advice.

Speaking at a conference on Dec. 11 in Mountain View, Calif., Linus Upson, engineering director at Google, said there were many discussions before allowing ad-blocking programs “because Google makes all of its money from advertising.”

But he explained that the prevailing thinking was that “it’s unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying.”

“So I think the market will sort this out,” he said. “At least that is the bet we made when we opened the extension gallery and didn’t have any policy against ad-blockers.”

That was a long quote but it’s the last sentence that was uttered by a company that is both loved and scorned at the same time. This is uttered by a company that some would think anti-trust is in their future in the same way it was for Microsoft and IBM. Letting the market sort it out is the only way to go in the long run. Sure there will be hiccups but the alternative (some form of regulation that reads real well but in practical use is just plain stupid) is not going to work. I think that there is enough evidence from 2009 for that one.

Similar extensions are currently available on Firefox, which has a much larger market share but has not exactly stopped Google in its tracks so that may be the evidence needed.

Oh and if you want to gain access to these blockers here’s their stories and a link or two for you.

As it happens, two 28-year-olds, Michael Gundlach, an independent programmer from outside Athens, Ga., and Tom Joseph, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Mount Sinai Medical School, separately went through the exact same experience. In telephone interviews, each told of excitedly looking to see if he could install a Chrome extension of his favorite Firefox add-on, Adblock Plus, which prevents ads from appearing on Web sites, whether bright flashing animation or the text ads that Google serves up after a search.

They did not find one. So, naturally, each spent a day or so creating a rough version of such an extension, with much more work to come. AdThwart from Mr. Joseph is now No. 2 in popularity among the more than 1,200 Chrome extensions; AdBlock from Mr. Gundlach is No. 8. Together, they already have more than 120,000 users.

Happy ad blocking!

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Earlier this month, Google announced that its Personalized Search results would come to even computers that weren’t signed in to Google accounts. With the opt-out system in place, many users and public computers can’t help but use personalized search by default—and it may be AdSense publishers paying for it.

The logic goes something like this: if Google is now storing information about what you’re searching for even if you’re not signed in, it may also serve ads based on your search and browsing history, which you’re less likely to click on than ads only relevant to the page’s content. I’m not 100% sure that theory holds true (need more data!), but at least some AdSense publishers are seeing definite drop-off since Google threw the switch.

A thread on WMW documents some of publishers seeing this problem—and others who haven’t. Among those who’ve spoken up, seven of eleven have seen some sort of decrease in December (the original poster cited a significant slide in CTR and clicks from December 5 versus prior years, with CTR down 12.3% to 22.6% of normal average and clicks down 22.8% to 35.2% of normal average).

Of course, the personalized search change isn’t the only explanation in the first 30 messages of the WMW thread, alternate explanations offered include:

• the “Caffeine” update in Google’s index
• annual holiday decline (though the OP and some others note that this is more significant than previous years)
• the wider rollout of interest-based ads
• short sample skewing the results
• sector-specific slowdowns

Interestingly, the original poster returned the day after posting and noted that his CTR had jumped that day. He hadn’t seen a dropoff in his earnings per click (though the new high day carried much higher earnings).

What do you think? What could be behind a decrease—and have you seen one? Is personalized search affecting your AdSense results?

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New data from Chitika indicate that Microsoft users—both browser and operating system—click on online advertisements more often than other users. And considering what a significant portion of the market those segments constitute, that’s pretty dang good news.

From a sample of over 130 million impressions, Chitika saw a click-through rate of 1.05% from Internet Explorer users, versus 0.66% from Firefox users, 0.50% from Safari users and 0.21% from Chrome users. Similarly, Windows users outclick their Mac and Linux counterparts, 0.92% to 0.52% to 0.46%, respectively. According to TechCrunch, even Bing has higher click-through rates than other search engines.

So why is this large audience clicking so much? Are they “gullible,” as TechCrunch asks, not savvy enough to switch browsers or recognize an ad, or simply more engaged?

For whatever reason, this large group of the market certainly constitutes a valuable segment for marketers.

What do you think? Why do Microsoft users click more?

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It’s been a long time doming, but now it’s officially, truly, official: AOL is part of Time Warner no more. (Technically, actually, AOL bought Time Warner—isn’t that weird?—and now they’re the ones being spun off.) And with its newly-single status, AOL is eyeing every woman in the room—especially old flame Yahoo.

They were flirting (or at least rumors have been flying) heavily last year, with reports resurfacing periodically. But now the love has turned to rivalry, with AOL and Yahoo both focusing on their Internet display advertising businesses.

AOL is also looking to take on other Internet behemoths like Citysearch, Yelp and Google in a local effort:

The initiative — which he characterized as “digitizing towns” — will grow to 100 municipalities in 2010, [AOL CEO and ex-Googler Tim] Armstrong said. Providing a turn-key platform where schools, government departments, local businesses, and classified listings firms can create or update Web sites will be at the heart of the effort.

AOL is also focusing on an API-intensive ad platform to allow users to interface directly with their data. That’s cool.

But the heart of their plan is their content. AOL will be heavily focusing its advertising sales upon its own properties, where 80% of the content is original. Yahoo, by contrast, has about 20% original content.

What do you think? Can AOL be turned around, or is it too late?

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Yahoo’s taking ad targeting to a whole new level with its new Ad Interest Manager. Now advertisers aren’t the only ones who can target you—you can target yourself, too! The new AIM system enables users to select their interests and block ads outside of those interest areas.

According to the press release, the tool:

• Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience.
• Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising.
• Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided.
• Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off.
• Allows people who don’t want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely.

As the quote indicates, the system gives you a list of ad categories Yahoo believes you’re interested in, based on your activity on the site, including search history, and properties including Yahoo Answers, Flickr and Yahoo Groups. You can then switch off each individual category. Switch off seven categories, and the system prompts you, asking if you want to switch off all behavioral targeting.

Overall, this is a smart move—allowing users to target ads to themselves insures greater value for advertisers. But the system will only work as well as its implementation—both the targeting and the promotion of the system must be good enough for the system to gain widespread use. Yahoo will have to use fairly prominent, probably front-page, promotion to not only show that are they behind this system, but to make their every day users aware of the improvements.

What do you think? Will you use the AIM targeting system? As a user or an advertiser, are you excited about this?

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Can you tell the difference between these two ads?

Look closely:

Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!

OK, that’s not quite the same example that Google just gave over at the official blog, but it did announce that it plans to acquire Teracent.

What does Teracent do?

Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.

Think of it as multi-variate testing for your banner ads.

No news yet on the price paid and the deal is subject to final closing conditions.

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According to a recent survey by email marketing company VerticalResponse, small and medium businesses are wising up to online marketing. For their 2010 plans, they’re big into SEM, social media and email marketing—but interest in banner ads is quickly waning.

54.2% of SMBs do not plan to use banner ads online next year. Of those that are currently using banner ads, less than 20% of businesses with 11-100 employees reported increasing their banner spend this year (and about 7% of businesses with <10 employees).

A few other advertising media aren’t doing so well. 23.8% of SMBs aren’t looking at paid or natural SEM. Conversely, some 96% plan to use email marketing in 2010, and more than a third of SMBs surveyed are planning to increase their email spending “by a lot” in the coming year. But the big losses come in TV and radio, which has long been a strong seller for local advertising: 79.6% are not planning to use TV, and 72.7% won’t be using radio advertising.

VerticalResponse points out that the low level of adoption is a big opportunity for vendors in the online banner ad arena (and the SEM arena, to a lesser extent). However, unless they mean display ad marketplaces, it’s tough for full-size Internet marketing companies to accommodate the budget needs of SMBs while still offering customized campaigns, advice and value for scale. (I’ve been there.)

What do you think? Should SMBs pay more attention to online banners? How can Internet marketing companies accommodate their needs?

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It’s been two and a half years since Google acquired digital marketplace DoubleClick for $3.1B. Over that time, they’ve gotten approval for the deal, made it official and merged their technologies more and more closely. This week they’re announcing another step to that integration—new analytics for its ad manager and better integration with its Ad Planner.

Right now, advertisers must plan their campaigns in one tool and execute them in another, according to Ari Paparo, group product manager at Google. The new tools would integrate the ad platform better to bring planning, execution and measurement to one place.

The new analytics will be very similar to Google Analytics in layout and function:

Paparo says the new product will streamline reporting on display ad campaigns:

Think of it as something you do when drinking your morning coffee and reading the news. You come in and try to find out what happened yesterday. What performed and what didn’t perform, and where did it perform. It should be intuitive, fast and easy to use.

Once these changes are implemented, Google could build on its progress. For example, Ad Planner could add predictive algorithms to help advertisers find new audiences tailored to their offerings, with traffic estimates, demographic data and more.

What do you think? Will this help display advertisers using Google? What’s in the future for Ad Planner?

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If you’re into smartphones or mobile advertising, you’ve probably heard of AdMob, a popular mobile display advertising company. And apparently Google’s heard of them, too—Google announced today that they have acquired AdMob for $750M in stock.

Google reports some mobile ad stats:

• iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years
• And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]

As noted in the stats, Google is doing well in mobile search (though there’s still plenty of competition). But, Google says, they’re not the only ones who’ll benefit from this acquisition. Publishers will get better products, tools and monetization. Advertisers will get greater reach and “better, more relevant ads” for users engaged with mobile content. Users will get more mobile content and more useful mobile ads.

I’m not sure I buy all that—the deal might make it easier to target ads, for example, but it’s not automatically going to make advertisers’ ads better.

What do you think? Who’s really going to benefit most from this deal?

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OpenX has long been angling for Google’s online ad dominance. And after a new multi-year deal with Microsoft, announced this morning, they’ll have an even bigger ally in the fight. The partnership has been in trials for over a year, but is now official.

Explains TechCrunch:

Under the agreement, Pasadena-based OpenX becomes a preferred partner to publishers for enterprise ad serving solutions and has agreed to promote Microsoft’s Content Ads monetization products and eventual future products to its own roster of web publisher customers.

OpenX said that publishers usings its recently launched OpenX Market and Ad Server products will be able to use MS’s Content Ads, and that the Redmond software giant will refer potential customers to OpenX.

OpenX Market and Ad Server compete with Google’s Ad Manager product. Display is obviously not Google’s bread and butter (though every little bit helps), and it is OpenX’s.

Interestingly, after last year’s acquisitions, OpenX’s advertising services compete not only with Google’s DoubleClick but also Microsoft’s aQuantive. Perhaps Microsoft doesn’t see them as quite enough of a threat to their advertising business—or perhaps they just want market share so badly that they’re willing to foster internal competition.

What do you think? Will OpenX and Microsoft be able to take on Google?

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As usual, you can find statistics to support almost any argument. For example, if you want to use online ad spending as a measure of the economy, things are either looking up or looking down—take your pick. With search ad spend, the trend is up, but on social networks, the trend is down.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, social network ads are doing well—just last month, we were hearing that over 20% of online ads are shown on social networks, with MySpace having a slight edge over Facebook. Just a few weeks ago, Neilsen reported YOY ad spend growth on social networks—but the real figures may be more grim, says eMarketer. While the spend may be increasing, it’s still way too small for how many impressions they give. Social networks account for 3.5% of total Internet ad spending—a little disproportionate for a sector that’s displaying 22% of total Internet ads, don’t you think?

Although social network ads might outpace their respective ad spend by a factor of more than six, there is good news in online advertising—in search. Business Week reports that search has seen increasing ad spend for two consecutive quarters now:

Source: eFrontier

Does this have anything to do with why at least one analyst says Google’s worth $100 more than its current price?

Well, I just have to say, it’s a darn good thing the government has already disbursed those $787B to needy PPC advertisers so we could get this economy turned around. (What’s that? Only 22% of the announced contract, grant, entitlement and loan funds have been paid out, and 49% of the funds haven’t even been assigned yet? Oh . . . so whose fault is this uptick?)

What do you think? Is search ad spending or social network ad spending a better sign of the economy’s next steps? Is Google really undervalued?

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comScore reports that over the last two years, banner ads have seen a sharp decline in clicks—half as many web users click on banner ads now.

Two years ago, 32%—nearly one in three—web users clicked on banner ads; comScore’s data show that now only 16% do. And half of those clickers—one in twelve—account for 85% of the banner ad clicks.

comScore cautions, however, that the plummeting click metric may be less a sign of the dying banner ad format and more a sign that clicks aren’t the best indicator of banner ads’ effectiveness. And it’s true that banner ads may help with brand awareness—and may lead to other types of visits, including searches or type-in traffic.

According to Econsultancy, in fact, the greatest benefit from banner ads is that

display advertising still helps brand lift online — more clicks on a brand’s website, more searches on brand content. And combined with search advertising, consumers were twice as likely to make a purchase on a company’s website.

Also, Econsultancy notes, “According to ChoiceStream research, display ads can generate a 60% lift in click-through rates on search results.” And:

according to John Lowell, Starcom USA SVP and director of research and analytics: “A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity. Your online advertising has some goal — and it’s certainly not to generate clicks.”

But if said ads don’t generate any response, of course, it certainly seems like a waste of money to go into display.

What do you think? Are banner ads dead—or should clicks die as a metric? What’s the better monitorable alternative?

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