Dick Reed over at Just Media recently ran a blog post that examined the changes in advertising spending for the top 50 technology companies from 2006 to 2007. The shift in spend works out as follows: TV down 6%, newspapers down 31% , magazines down 25%, B2B press down 16%, outdoor up 45%, radio down 10%, internet up 20%. The overall shift in spending numbers is not surprising, pretty much everyone is being more cautious these days. The figures for internet advertising are as expected (factoring in the zillions that continue to fall into Google’s pockets) The outdoor advertising number is pretty interesting, but primarily reflects new technology being applied to a very old medium (having said that, the digital billboards are pretty cool, even if I can only look at them for 2 seconds).

The real issue for advertising spending is not the delivery vehicle per se as much as the targeting capability. A really great ad that reaches a million people who aren’t interested makes money for everyone except the client. The less sexy but more useful component of this is taking the underlying database of targets and running behavior and demographic cross-references. You could even take it a step further and apply predictive analytics, which would let you anticipate what the consumer wants even before they know it (sort of like a more sophisticated form of collaborative filtering). At any rate, hopefully the numbers Dick put up will start to head north soon, there’s a few leading indicators this may start happening.

So what are the kingpins of on-line advertising up to? To date, Google has done an excellent job of wringing every last penny possible out of text-based advertising tied to search returns, while Yahoo has been pretty successful (stock price notwithstanding) at delivering a rich media experience to it’s end-users in the context of search returns. Sounds like there’s a nice confluence of opportunity here for both companies to combine their efforts. Then of course, there’s always the possibility that the other behemoth, Microsoft, seeing Google as the threat it really is, would try to step in and snap up Yahoo, since they are more acquirable now than they have been in years. But this misses a crucial point…

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There’s an interesting confluence that’s just starting to gain traction in the enterprise. This is the intersection of rich media, social networking, dynamic content management and the on-demand business model.

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Adobe recently announced the availability of a browser based authoring tool through the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and the release of a beta version of Share, an on-line documentation collaboration tool. This seems like an odd foray for Adobe, particularly on the heels on the launch of their Technical Communications Suite.

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The folks at Gartner have come up with another iteration of their “Magic” quadrant for ECM vendors, with what appears to be a very short-sighted perspective—an intentional exclusion of SaaS vendors as part of the market for content management software.

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This morning Adobe announced the availability of their Technical Communication Suite. While the offering is broad and appears to be tightly integrated, its still just shy of where it needs to be in terms of addressing critical requirements for true enterprise deployment.

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I’ve gotten some comments on the last several rich media postings, and the conversation always moves into the specifics of what people are doing now, and what they plan to do in the near future in terms of how they handle product-centric information, regardless of media type.

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Picture yourself standing on a beach. You look out towards the ocean and suddenly see a fifty foot wave headed in your direction. Do you 1) freeze in place, 2) run like hell in the opposite direction towards higher ground, or 3) grab your surfboard and run right at the wave?

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There have been a number of posts recently regarding the validity and role of wikis as an information delivery vehicle in a corporate setting. Part of the concern is the unregulated nature of how a wiki works.

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The internet is “dead and boring,” according to a recent online post. The energy and growth that characterized the dotcom boom is missing. A follow-up comment noted rich media applications would drive the web to a new level of dynamic growth and the process was already underway. I completely disagree with the first point, and slightly disagree with the second point.

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So since this is Labor Day weekend, let’s talk about labor savings techniques. When people refer to labor they normally refer to manual labor, as in this is a labor saving technique. Another example of this would be labor savings in terms of saving time with processes that we deal with every day, millions of times per day.

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So to begin, if rich media information is going to be managed by a content management system, the rich media needs to be “manageable.” The most effective way to manage information within a document repository (particularly a large one) is to organize information by topic, preferably to a very granular level.

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At a macro level, what are the primary means people use to assimilate information? We read text, we look at 2D or 3D images, we can look at animated data (e.g. Flash), or full motion video, and we listen to verbal instructions.

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Professional technical writers create documentation around a product or process; User Guides, Training Materials, Field Service Guides, etc. Basically documents you read because you have to, not because you want to.

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Adobe’s recent announcement about the release of Framemaker 8 is interesting not only because of what it says, but more so because of what it doesn’t say.

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