Online Ad Spending Rises at Double Digits --Gains Share Vs all other Media

Despite the global economic recession's drag on advertising budgets, the growth in online ad spending appears to be defying expectations, and is expanding at double-digit rates, according to the latest quarterly forecast from Publicis' ZenithOptimedia Group. The agency estimates that Internet ad spending will expand 10.1% in 2009, an increase of more than 1.5 percentage points over its last forecast in April.

Via @MindyFinn

Palin's Facebook Pals Soar

Sarah Palin's Facebook page gains 30,000 followers in the wake of her announcement that she is resigning the office of Governor of Alaska. (Chart [included].)

Palin's Online Army Unbowed by her Resignation

Among rank-and-file Republicans, there is simply no one quite like Palin on the Web. That was the case the moment Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) picked her as his running mate on the GOP presidential ticket, and Palin's Wikipedia article became the most viewed on the edit-it-yourself site for a whole month.

It was still the case once her resignation hit the blogosphere and social networking sites. Google searches for Palin have spiked to their highest levels since the election, Galen Panger, a Google spokesperson, told The Post.

Picked up a few items and ideas over the last few days so I wanted to get them into a blog post before they flittered away into the ether. So here goes......

First up is my thoughts on music. Yes, music which has been know to be used in a few persuasive political commercials over the years and is fairly important to this whole process of effective online messaging. Evidenced by all the recent talk about Hillary's campaign theme song. From how they promoted it online for grassroots development to the latest You Tube Sopranos piece. Not to mention the Obama Girl video which is all about the music and a few other things I won't mention.

In fact I am going to not mention Obama girl anymore and move on to the larger point. Music existed before language. See some latest research here.

I hope that as we go forward that we do not miss out on paying attention to not only a visual message and using YouTube to push that message but the music that we put behind it.

Better yet, maybe would should employ Roy Williams of the Wizard Academy's suggestion and have our words make music. These are all key elements we need to pull together if we are going to make our case pursuasively to those who are coming from a different mind set than those that have time to read blogs, listen to talk radio and watch Tim Russert.

Even over at EyeOn08.com a recent commentor panned on Newt's latest immigration ad by saying:

What is even more bizzare to me is the choice of music in the background, it’s like elevator light jazz, not exactly what I would have chosen for an ominous fear inducing ad.

Full post is here.

Now I was taught by my high school speach team coach that what ever distracts (hand motions, sneezing on your hands, jingling change in your pocket, etc.) keeps the message from being delivered effectively. In this case for this commentor it was the background music. I'll have more on this in another post but I would welcome anyone with more experience to add to the discussion on effective music and how it best can be applied with online ads, espically when you are dealing with not so great computer speakers. Just a thought.

To wrap up, I have been getting a weekly e-mail from these folks for about a year and I would recommend them as a resource. They are all about online conversation rates and getting people to move through a website and get them to stay and actually participate with the website. They have a PDF book you can download here on persuasive online copy writing that I plan on purchasing.

That's all for now, your comments are appreciated. Or you can e-mail me directly at adfocus at gmail.com