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fortune_teller.jpgBy B.L. Ochman
With timerity, I offer my Internet marketing predictions for 2009. They are in no particular order. I think the words of the year will be mobile, subscriptions, lighting, and blog advertising.
2009 is going to be a roller-coaster ride, but we’ll be fine in the end. I wish you all a year of peace, good health, prosperity, love, and growth. Thank you so much for reading What’s Next Blog for all these years. You rock!
1. iPhone will finally allow a BlueTooth keyboard to be attached so you can actually type instead of using iPhone’s stupid excuse for a keyboard. Other manufacturers will follow and phones will eclipse laptops. No matter how light the laptop, those mothers are heavy and cumbersome with battery, adapter, case, etc. that you have to schlep with you.
2. Correct lighting for video cameras and vlog broadcasts will be the must-have product of the moment. That’s because nobody likes looking at dark videos and ghoulish-looking people.
3. Podcasts will either adopt better production values or die. Dunno about you, but I can’t listen to rambling podcasts. Brevity is a virtue.
4. Google stock will hit $1000 a share and split. The founders will cash out and the company then accused of piercing the corporate veil with creative accounting. They’ll come out on top before the end of the year, and new accounting standards will be set by the case. I predicted this last year. I was premature.
5. Nobody will buy Twitter. It will adopt a subscription model for corporate clients, and every fifth tweet will be an ad unless individual users pay a small fee for ad-free Tweets.
6. Bloggers who built their personal brands with blogs and then diluted them with Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., will return to their blogs in earnest. (Including me)
7. Pawfun.com will be a huge success. B.L. Ochman will end 2009 as a t-shirt marketer, retiring from consulting.
8. MySpace will be replaced by a social network that bans ugly pages and stupid music that won’t shut off.
9. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes. I’ve been saying this since 2005, but it takes a while for agencies to get the picture.
Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising. Shameless plug: I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.
Bonus Link: B.L. Ochman’s 2008 Online Marketing Predictions: Mobile, Subscriptions, Collaboration Rule