As audiences spend less of their free time watching TV and more of it online, Internet advertising will grow quickly. In fact, the global online advertising market is expected to double in size from 2008 to 2012, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) whitepaper. The authors, Simon Wright and Juraj Zdinak, uncover why providers of Web 2.0-based services will need to develop new advertising models based on users’ behaviors and willingness to buy.

 

In the past two decades, technical devices have brought more collaboration, social interaction, personalization, active participation and communication itself than ever before. One of the main reasons for this has been the emergence and spread of broadband Internet, according to industry experts. It is already having an effect, not only on societies and communities but also on businesses and established business models.

 

Alcatel-Lucent believes the world is not undergoing just a technology revolution, but a value revolution that is being driven by ongoing and increasingly prolific innovation. For instance, personal CPM, or cost per thousand page impressions, and “pay-per-sell” are increasingly attracting interest.

 

Changes affecting the Internet and the telecommunication industry are the result of changed communication behaviors going back more than two decades. Several trends are occurring, according to the whitepaper’s authors, including: collaboration; social interaction; personalization; active participation; and communication through technical devices.

 

The Web has spun its own market where growth in fixed and mobile broadband has created a richer multimedia communication environment. This has shifted the emphasis from personal communication and voice transmitted communication to a multimedia and multi-content way of communicating.

 

There is a vast amount of information available to potential advertisers that rests in the hands of the network operator, who has access to the virtual footprints left with every move on the Internet. This data is an apparent goldmine for businesses with the technology to collect, analyze, and repurpose it. There is no question that the number of Internet users continues to grow. However, there remain those who believe that this current evolution will soon crash. These naysayers are comparing current growth to the dot-com bubble of 2000.

 

The main argument of these “non-believers” is that Web 2.0 start-ups do not have any real income source: their business model is often based either on future predictions of tremendous

growth in online advertisements or on a wish to be acquired by a strategic investor early on, according to the authors. They point to the so-called “over-valuation” of start-up companies such as Facebook (News - Alert), which was valued at $15 billion by Microsoft.

 

The next wave of Internet evolution will exist in Web 3.0. The widely accepted opinion about the future evolution of Web 2.0 is expressed by Business Consultant Stowe Boyd. “Personally, I feel the vague lineaments of something beyond Web 2.0, and they involve some fairly radical steps” he says. “Imagine a Web without browsers. Imagine breaking away completely from the document metaphor, or a true blurring of application and information. That’s what Web 3.0 will be. But I bet we will call it something else.”

 

With network operators only in the initial stages of network evolution, much work is to be done. This is where network equipment vendors like Alcatel-Lucent become an integral part of the process. They have the experience and the technology to enable operators to efficiently and cost effectively enhance their capabilities.