The recession in 2009 drove a heightened focus on efficiency and increased digital display and paid search budgets at the expense of other channels. Yesterday content portals dominated consumer time online and ad revenue. Today, clearly, social media has completely changed the world – brands are targeting consumers demographically, behaviorally and with dynamic messaging and offers that pertain to their preferences. Hyper targeting through the fray of content directly to audiences via large ad impression aggregators called ad networks has increased considerably. But wait, publishers suddenly realized that this practice of selling their impressions was de-valuing their content and thus eventually going to be a no-revenue model.

Now, Time Inc, CondeNast and other premium publishers are selling their content exclusively across multiple devices – smartphones, iPads, PC, Print, Web TV – forcing content to remain just as important as audience targeting in the digital realm. Digital content consumption will continue to fragment as Web-enabled TV’s explode in the next couple years. Eventually, we will see more of what Turner and Sports Illustrated are already pioneering, and that is securing a certain content alignment across multiple devices with one transaction, one sales rep. Impressions will simply be divided across the delivery devices as appropriate based on demand.

Other trends to watch are:

• In-game advertising due to the explosion and high consumer penetration of Xbox and PS3 systems that can dynamically serve ads
• Agency trading desks to answer impression demand for direct marketers
• Mobile, as consumption increases and adoption of daily usage grows for all age groups
• How Web on TV and the iPad are going to change the print world and content distribution forever

Get ready!

Photo links to G20Buzz.com

When the White House announced earlier this year that Pittsburgh was to be the host of the next G-20 summit, Pittsburghers everywhere initially reacted with shock, which turned into excitement, which turned into a feeling of ‘it’s about time.’ Pittsburgh has made a smooth transition to a new economy, and we’re proud to play host to one of the world’s largest international events, The G20 Summit.

Mullen Pittsburgh viewed this as an opportunity to use our interest and knowledge of social media to benefit the Pittsburgh community by creating a clearinghouse for all information about the G20 Summit – a web site called G20Buzz.com. The site is a real-time aggregate of sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and it also includes up to the minute articles by harnessing Google News. This is where the user-driven aspect of the site really begins to shine. By creating G20Buzz.com, we wanted to make sure we could create a place where people could find all G20 news.

The G20 is a deeply polarizing event, both on a local and global scale. For Pittsburghers, is the headache of hosting the summit worth it in the long run? For the world, is this really a beneficial meeting? Is globalization the future, or is it an evil? Everyone has something to say about it, and G20Buzz.com lets everyone tell the world – all in one place.

While you’re at it, check out some of the buzz the site has been getting in Pittsburgh:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: New Web site says it has buzz on G-20 summit
Pop City Media: Want more G-20? Don’t miss a beat this week with G20Buzz.com
Exponentialweb.com: Pittsburgh G-20 + Social Media = LOVE