(2009-01-09) Wilson Display Ad Scale

Fred Wilson predicts that Display Ad-s will outperform search. In this economic downturn we will see even less of the display inventory being sold the old way at high CPM-s and more going into the remnant Ad Network-s and ultimately onto the Ad Exchange-s. And online ad buyers are setting up shop on those exchanges and buying billions of impressions at amazingly cheap prices. And they are deploying increasingly sophisticated tools and leveraging cookie-based data that allows them to target in real time the right ad to the right person at the right time. In that model, display advertising will perform as well as search. This is not good news for publishers who have an economic model based on a $20cpm. It is very good news for Social Media properties that have low costs and a high number of available impressions to sell. It's even better news for people looking to sell stuff on the internet (E Commerce). I Commented to clarify use of Display Ad term.