ChasNote

Among the list of 14: Apple and Google have peaked (though Google’s stock will spike later in the year); Yahoo and AOL will merge and will cut a deal with Microsoft to monetize Microsoft’s traffic; and Twitter will continue to gain momentum. And two of particular interest to ChasNote fans:

“The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year’s end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend. I think it’s possible that Q1 09 will be lower than Q1 08, marking the first time that has happened since 01, if I recall correctly. This will cause all sorts of consternation and hand wringing, but in the end, it won’t matter. The web is where people are spending their time, the web will be where marketers spend their money.”

And:

“Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with ’social media.’ They will take budget reserved for media spending (IE buying banners and building out branding campaigns) and start to become publishers in their own right. This is not a new tactic (many marketers, in particular technology companies, have published magazines, for example, and many consumer brands create or co-create television series), but given the plastic and social nature of online media, many marketers will see these efforts fail, in particular when the efforts are executed in partnership with major media companies. The reason has to do with putting the cart before the horse: in order to truly succeed in conversational media, the company must itself be fluent in that conversation. A partner with tons of traffic, but who is not fluent, will not be the ‘translator’ major brands need

Someone Like You… on dvd

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His final prediction is that he’ll finish that next book. I’m betting against that one. His FM colleagues (myself included) have plans to keep him busy with his day job.