With 2005 drawing to a close, it’s time for the interactive advertising year in review. If you’re like me, you can’t remember what happened in July let alone way back in January, particularly where interactive marketing trends are concerned (have you noticed that there’s a considerable amount of overlap with these sorts of things?). With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a month by month recap of the units, formats, and channels that made this a watershed year for interactive marketing.
h3. January: Vlogs
Given the popularity of blogs in 2004, we had to expect the trend would continue this year. The newest blogs, however, were a lot richer. Video blogs (blogs that incorporate video clips) made their presence known this year, thanks to vlogs like Peter Jackson’s “Kong is King”:http://www.kongisking.net/index.shtml. They’re sure to continue to flourish, thanks to distribution channels like multimedia search engines.
h3. February: Podcasting
Podcasting ended up being big all year long, but February “saw the introduction of the world’s first podcasting ad network”:http://www.clickz.com/experts/media/media_buy/article.php/3483571. Just think how much our “options have expanded”:http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113167835201394489-6RLXo50JXniwqPt59a3cCUJPXsM_20061111.html?mod=blogs) since then.
h3. March: Online Video
After the Superbowl, which brought with it a number of TV ads that subsequently found audiences online (remember “GoDaddy?”:http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp?isc=wscfwst304&se=%2B), marketers took a longer, harder look at online video. Can you think of a current online campaign that doesn’t include it?