BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
01 Jan 2008

John Battelle has his usual predictions for 2008, lots of good tidbits in there, but if he is right across the board (no one is, I know…) then 2008 will be the year of the spin-off. Battelle - who runs blog ad network Federated Media when he’s not blogging - calls for

- AOL’s Platform A
- News Corp. Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace
- Microsoft’s aQuantive

to file for a public offering.

I could see MySpace doing that because it will be three years since the deal and News Corp. would reap quite a financial windfall from the deal we ranked as the best Web M&A deal of all time, but we’re doubtful of the other two. Either way, it’s a good read. I also agree with his call for Facebook to bring in a CEO, I said that too in our 2008 Predictions list… I even added that the CEO will be female.  Another area where I think he is right is that 2008 will actually post strong gains for Web advertising:

Everyone I speak to is very worried that we’re in for a major economic downturn, and we all know that a key lagging indicator of a recession is a serious downturn in the advertising markets. I’m going to buck all my colleagues fears, however, and predict that web-based advertising businesses will in fact enjoy significant gains in 2008. 

My argument is that online advertising’s three T’s (targeted, timely, tracked) will help it at the expense of offline advertising budgets.