This being the week of ad:tech, news of online advertising has dominated the conversation: from MySpace’s hyper- targeted ads to Facebook’s new ad system to broadband advertising systems introduced by companies such as AnchorFree. The advertising, of course, is becoming social, mobile, and behavioral.
If you take all this into account, and juxtapose it against the recent eMarketer’s forecast — U.S. online advertising nearly doubling from $21.4 billion in 2007 to $42 billion in 2011, representing about 13 percent of the total ad-spend — what you get is a pretty decent context for the ongoing battle amongst Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), phone & cable companies, wireless carriers, Facebook, MySpace (NWS) and countless other startups. [digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Online_Advertising_Growing_Exponentially_How_Much_Is_Too_Much]
Of course, it also means that advertising (or marketing messages) are going to be in-your-face, every time you turn around. What is the theoretical limit to our ability to absorb these messages? I just wonder, when, as people-being-marketed-to will we say: Enough! Stop! Or will we?
