The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues for 2005 are estimated to exceed $12.5 billion, a 30% increase over the previous revenue record of $9.6 billion in 2004. The 2005 Q4 revenues totaled a record $3.6 billion; making it the second consecutive quarter to surpass the $3 billion mark and the highest quarter reported. Fourth-quarter revenues represent a 35% increase over the same period in 2004 and a 17% increase over Q3 of 2005. "As consumers continue to embrace the Internet as an integral part of their everyday lives, marketers continue to acknowledge that Interactive is a critical medium to engage their customers and create deeper brand experiences," said Greg Stuart, CEO, IAB.

from the IAB smart brief

more good news for the industry. tc.

Taken from the IABaustralia site: "Sydney, Tuesday 28 February 2006…The Interactive Advertising Bureau, in collaboration with the digital committees of the Advertising Federation of Australia and the Media Federation of Australia today announced the launch of the first Australian online ad format standardisation."

It took a third party group like the IAB to finally get all the major parties talking. Finally life will be a little less annoying.

My fav size is the "hockey stick" from 9msn which bares no resemblance to a real hockey stick. Sadly this hasn't been mentioned by the IAB, maybe next year.

You may have seen Channel 9's uninspired rebranding but you may not know the story of the balls. Check out Nine has No balls for their story.

We would have preferred then to frop the 9 and just have the nine balls. It woudl have allowed for much more creative use of the logo than just chucking it in a box.

ps. The new still the one promo bites but it's no worse than Ten's new summer ident. Thank Allah we have SBS to inject some creativity into Aussie TV idents.

Update: A reader sent me a link to a research report on Word of Mouth marketing, titled 'To Tell or Not to Tell?' - Disclosure & Organised Word-of-Mouth Marketing. The report by BzzAgent.com and Professor Walter Carl is availabled from here - to download

The result? It appears to have provoked a backlash amongst internet users for it's perceived hijacking of the weblog/community space.

One of the most contentious aspects of the teaser campaign is the formation of a so-called action group called the 'The Zero Movement'. Complete with blog and manifesto. The site has prompted a strong backlash from the blogging community, who have branded it an unwelcome intrusion that is 'dishonest'.

In a typical adbusters style, a group of users have formed another zero movement, exposing the Coke zero movement as nothing more than "a bunch of advertising wankers pretending to be a grass-roots movement". The group has hijacked the .org domain for the renegade zero movement. (let this be a lesson to advertisers who fail to secure multiple domains) and used it to promote 'real' causes, as well as using it as an opportunity to highlight some of the other coke sites out there, including Killer Coke.

The blacklash has even earned the renegade Zero Movement website a listing on the ever popular Wikipedia Coke Zero Entry

Further searches turned up a number of post on various Yahoo Forums(Sports, Movies, News) by a person named Carl from the Zero Movement. A quick search on Google how widespread some of the forum postings are, and amongst all of this are posts from users on blogs and other forums, when they realise its just one big Coke advertisement.

Has coke overstepped the mark with its invasion of the online community? Judging by the various examples above, I'd say yes. Is this the type of response Coke was looking for? I'm not entirely sure it would be. Whatever the result for Coke, there are some valuble insights and learnings here.

For more reading on this topic :
The Age : Got a cool new product? Don't tell anyone
B&T : Zero plus zero, is still zero
Consumers: 1 Coke: zero
Those Crafty Bastards
How a fake blog can become a real suicide
CBC: Flogging backfires for Coke's Zero Movement
Digg listing
Coke Zero blog shows almost zero understanding
Coke Lies Mislead with fake Zero
Zero Movement Loser
The Zero Movement Sucks Blog

29% of site traffic from 0.5% of Media Spend. No mainstream site can offer this kind of ROI that Audi achived for it's A3 Heist campaign.

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Blog Ads or social media havent been utilised enough by mainstream advertisers and this means there is little reader backlash and greater attention.

Link from Adrants.com