My Internet Marketing Predictions for 2008 – James Jones

I like James Jones a great deal … so what are your predictions for 2008?

From James Jones’ new blog

My Internet Marketing Predictions for 2008

1. Google will roll out Pay Per Action Ads. Currently Pay Per Action is in beta and by invitation only but I think before the end of 2008 we’ll see Pay Per Action come out of beta. More info about Google Pay Per Action Ads can be found here: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11635
2. Yahoo Publisher Network will briefly come out of beta, see it’s shadow, go back into beta and slowly chock to dead on it’s own indecisiveness.
3. Google will do evil.
4. eBay will drop their listing fee in favor of a higher final value fee. (ok, that’s not so much a prediction as a forgone conclusion but as I write this it hasn’t been announced yet so if it happens I get to take credit for the correct prediction.)
5. eBay sellers will find something to bitch and moan about wheither Prediction #4 happens or not.
6. The Kindle will be the hottest consumer electronic product of 2008. What does this have to do with internet marketing? If you publish PDF content you should also publish it in Kindle format and take advantage of this emerging new distribution channel for digital products. (stay tuned to this blog for more about Kindle and Kindle Content)
7. Aweber will be acquired by (Google?). Tom Zulzer and his team have done a great job of building Aweber into the premier Auto Responder service on the internet. You can barely utter the phrase “email marketing” without mentioning Aweber in the same breath. I think Tom’s positioning Aweber for a buyout. And with Google’s new Pay Per Action Ads coming on line this year — well, sounds like a no-brainer for the good folks over at do-no-evil headquarters.
8. Microsoft will acquire Facebook. Acquisition rumors have been flying for a couple of years now with various players including Yahoo, Google, and AOL. I think the most likely and best fit would be Microsoft. In 2008 Facebook will be a force to be reckoned with in the Pay Per Click industry and I think Microsoft will see this as a way to gain much needed Pay Per Click Impressions without competing with “Live Search” (the MSN search engine).
9. The return of Wayne Yeager to Internet Marketing. If you don’t recognize the name then you need to turn in your internet marketer membership card and badge. Wayne was one of the first Internet Marketing gurus — although I doubt he ever considered himself such. He started the Trafficology newsletter. He was ClickBank’s first customer with a product called Unclaimed Domains. (ClickBank actually used his account as a live demo on how to use ClickBank — probably still viewable on archive.org). He was the first internet marketer to talk about the weath of information available in the public domain. He developed a traffic generation technique called Sidetracking. A few years ago he sold everything and got out of Internet Marketing to devote all his time to his eBay Auction tracking service, Viewtracker (www.sellathon.com). Last January Wayne sold Viewtracker to Auctiva. I figure Wayne’s had about a year now to rest up. And with his sharp marketing mind I doubt he can stay out of the game for long. Come on back Wayne. We miss ya!
10. Pay Per Play ads will die a fast death. If you haven’t seen this yet it’s basically an online media channel that plays 5 second audio advertisements on websites. The website owner gets paid a commission for every play. Sounds like a great concept but I really doubt it will fly. Fraudulent impressions (ie: bot generated hits to a website instead real visitors) plus the lack of participation of quality websites will cause advertisers to pull out in droves. Pay Per Play will be dead before the end of the year. You can find out more about Pay Per Play here at http://www.sellingppp.com/

It’ll be fun to see which (if any) of these predictions come true.