I’m a huge fan of Interactive advertising, not just Internet advertising.  I believe there is a difference between the two, almost in parrallel to saying that a ‘square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.‘  Interactive encompasses anything digital (in-game advertising, RSS, digital OOH, mobile, etc), whereas Internet advertising is just that, Internet.

Piper Jaffray, a leading middle market investment bank released a research report back in February entitled, “The User Revolution” which had some solid statistics for the Interactive advertising world.  This world is growing and eventually will dominate all media forms as traditional media (TV, Radio, Print, OOH) are all becoming digital/Interactive.

High level details of the reports:

• 1.  Global online advertising revenue to reach $81.1 billion by 2011.
  
• 2.  Communitainment: Internet has increasingly become a principal medium for community, communication and entertainment — three areas that have collided and are impacting each other’s growth — generating a new type of activity: communitainment. Communitainment is taking time away from other, traditional, types of content consumption on the Internet.
  
• 3.  Usites — The increasing popular category of user generated sites, which we are calling Usites, are driving traffic away from other destinations and pose a challenge to the advertisers and publishers.
  
• 4.  The Internet is now a mainstream medium: The web is the leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind television.
  
• 5.  Internet usage patterns are changing, favoring Usites, communitainment sites, search, and away from traditional portals.
  
• 6.  User Generated Brands. The consumers are taking control of content consumption and branding.
  
• 7.  Media Fragmentation: Advertisers increasingly will need to buy more inventory, from nearly all types of media, especially the Internet, to have the desired impact.
  
• 8.  The Golden Search: search has become the new portal.
  
• 9.  Google’s dominance is likely to expand, partly fueled by a wide variety of non-search related products that create a virtuous cycle of brand affinity for Google.
  
• 10. Video ads will be the driver of the next major growth in brand advertising and getting additional dollars shifted from traditional media to online.
  
• 11. Ad networks are experiencing increased demand due to increasing Internet fragmentation, desire for more targeted inventory, increasing usage of networks for branding and increased site visibility.
  
• 12. Agencies are rapidly evolving into more sophisticated, technology-savvy entities that combine best of breed offerings.

There is a chart that is referenced on Influx Insights blog this morning from this report as well that shows that 40% of people are willing to give up TV for Internet, up 14% since 2001.  This isn’t as high as I’d like to see, but certainly an improvement.  For one, I know that I spend a lot of time consuming Interactive media, and only a small percentage consuming television and print.

As people consumer more Interactive media, things will become much more efficient (technology gets involved) and amazing opportunities are created.  The Brickhouse at Yahoo, Next New Networks, Haystack, and other emerging Interactive companies will innovate and create tomorrow’s media channels.