We're already full steam into the (not so) new (anymore) year with new challenges ahead and by all accounts this will be a big year for the online industry. Read more on predictions for what lies ahead below. .....

Year of Broadband
Although a long time coming, it seems 2007 may be the year of broadband for SA. Are we really about to get lucky? IT news in the first week of the year was dominated by doom and gloom stories about new strains of AV-resistant viruses and undetectable image-based spam. Happily, all that negativity has since been counterbalanced by positive reports about broadband prospects for 2007.

Boom time for e-tailers
Online retail is poised to be a big money-spinner for retailers who have woken up to its promise, says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx.
According to Goldstuck, the figures surpassed expectations. “Original forecasts made a year ago predicted a 20% to 25% rise. It's safe to say by 2008, online retailing will be serious business.”

Deloitte releases telecoms trends for 2007
The Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice at Deloitte, which released its predictions for the telecoms sector for 2007 earlier this week, is forecasting three key trends: the Internet without the PC, paying for pipespace and large profits in small applications.
Danie Crowther, telecoms partner at Deloitte, comments: "Future growth in Internet penetration will not be solely via a PC, but will instead be driven by a range of small, simple and relatively inexpensive broadband appliances, such as portable email devices and media players fuelling the convergence drive.

Online marketing 101 – an introduction
There is a large group of people who have an understanding of what online is – they’ve heard of Google in the press, they send and receive e-mails, subscribe to newsletters covering topics that interest them and use the web to search for news, weather, travel etc. Online is increasingly becoming a part of their everyday lives, yet they still lack the knowledge of how to harness the medium and begin to use it as a powerful tool that adds value to their businesses.

Online 'permanence'
Content on a website should never die. Never, ever. To delete content on a website is a waste. Online articles and their links should be permanent. In the world of the dead tree, articles have limited life-spans. You read your paper, then it is used to wrap fish and chips, is thrown in the rubbish bin, or lives a lonely life of obscurity in some dusty library archive.

Ad to challenge telecoms status quo
In a campaign led by the Telecommunications Action Group (TAG), frustrated South Africans will be publishing a full page advert in the national Mail & Guardian on Friday, 19 January 2006, highlighting the cost of telecommunications in South Africa. The advert calls on all consumers to take action to challenge the telecoms status quo.
"We took this action because as consumers we are tired of the exorbitant costs of telecommunications in South Africa and the poor service from Telkom in South Africa," says Alastair Otter, Tectonic editor and a founder of the TAG campaign.

Online ads ‘shun user-generated video’ - Financial Times
User-generated video sites such as YouTube and MySpace will earn only a fraction of the advertising budgets available for more professional online programming, according to a study.

Such sites’ advertising revenues stand to grow from $200m last year to $875m by 2010, but this will account for just 15 per cent of the total online video advertising budget, according to Screen Digest, the media analysis company.

Blogging numbers likely to equal out
Media analysts are predicting that the number of blogs will level out in 2007 with 100 million blogs. Over 200 million have already stopped writing their blogs. According to Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer, "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." Some people have stayed committed to their blogs where others have gotten bored and stopped updating.

2007: The Year Users Will Make Your Ads
UGENmedia's co-founder/president predicts that advertiser demand for user-generated advertising will rise, consumer excitement will grow and the marketer/consumer relationship will be transformed.

We'd submit that this coming year will be the inaugural year of user-generated advertising with marketers starting to put viral video sharing to formal and extensive use. This is a fantastic trend, and, if executed properly, will forever change the nature of the marketer/consumer relationship in a very positive way. It's time to take the excitement and passion of user-generated content as evidenced by YouTube and combine it with the discipline of online marketing.

Metrics for Non-Transactional Web Sites
I have no idea whether this is true or not, but I once heard someone say that 80 percent of all Web sites don't sell anything. Yet, probably 80 percent of all Web analytics examples and case studies are based on transactional activities such as buying or subscribing to something. You can see why. It's much easier to demonstrate performance improvement or increases in return on investment when there hard dollar signs are attached.

TNS Predicts 'Tepid' Gain in Ad Spending for '07 Expects Internet Share to Rise, Network TV to Fall
Ad spending in the U.S. will rise only 2.6% this year to $153.7 billion, according to a forecast released this morning by TNS Media Intelligence, which called the increase a "tepid gain." It would represent the smallest increase since the media business left the 2001 recession behind -- certainly smaller than the 3.8% boost TNS estimates occurred in 2006. Inflation held down

6 Ways to make your ads sticky
Several readers have responded to my In Focus article, "How to Build Super-Sticky HomePages," with questions, so I thought I'd devote a follow-up piece to some practical ways to make things sticky.

First, please understand what I'm presenting here is at the 10,000 mile high level. I'm going to start with something I received in an email (all names are changed, of course): a flyer from a tobacconist:

7 Sticky Sites & Their Secrets Revealed
Portals - The stickiest sites on the web, as measured by comScore, are the portals. For example, people visited the Yahoo! family of sites, on average, nearly once a day. Community, entertainment and news sites followed closely behind, with frequency rates of once every two days.

From a minutes-per-visitor perspective, the portals again came out on top-- the Yahoo sites led here with an average of 11 minutes per visit; they were followed by community sites, led by MySpace.