Marketing

11 Internet Marketing Trends To Ignore in 2009

December 19, 2008 by ian

After having a bit of success with my 11 Internet Marketing Trends to Ignore in 2008, I thought I'd give it another shot.

My only totally incorrect predictions from 2008: E-books are catching on, and podcasts now capture a .002% audience, not .00001%. My bad.

1. Analytics. Yeah, you heard me. I love analytics. But they're gonna flop big-time in 2009 when everyone looks at everyone else and says "Holy crap. There's no standards!" If a pageview on Google Analytics isn't a pageview in Omniture, how the hell can anyone compare anything? Look for 2010 to be the Year of the Standards, and for someone to make millions of dollars talking about "Analytics 2.0". At which point I'll take out a contract on their worthless lives.

2. Vertical Search. I hate to kick that dead dog again, but it sucked in 2007, it sucked in 2008, and it'll continue to suck wind in 2009, assuming anyone actually bothers to try and start another vertical search service.

3. Google Searchwiki. Actually, this service will do well. But spammers will abuse it. After 1 million people bury the #1 listing for "bailout" and it throws Google's results on their ear, Google will implement new, undocumented policies that render Searchwiki utterly random.

4. Mobile Advertising. Someone else called this a trend, saying it'll "flourish". I love the StrangeCorp blog, but flourish? I don't think so. Maybe among us snobby elites, but it takes more than 10,000 to make a serious advertising market.

5. The average web user will continue to refuse to even sniff curiously at RSS.

6. Internet Explorer 8. Everyone's talking about it. I don't care. Google Chrome and FireFox will continue to take big bites out of IE, which will be released on December 31 2009 so Microsoft can keep their promise.

7. Content marketing. 2008 was the Year of Crappy Content. Everyone who thought they could write slapped together an ebook (cough)...