In 2009, look for trends such as new, better metrics to improve and measure ad performance, heightened privacy concerns and mainstream adoption of video advertising on the mobile Internet.

These and more were included 1020 Placecast's year-end list of interactive advertising trends to watch in 2009. 1020 Placecast is an online advertising company that targets audiences using location-based information across the Web, mobile, Wi-Fi networks and email.

"Market downturns always push advertisers to do more with less," said Alistair Goodman, CEO of 1020 Placecast, San Francisco. "In 2009, we will see mobile advertisers looking for better performance and reduced costs.

"We expect to see more advertisers embracing technologies like dynamic messaging to get the most out of their ad dollars," he said.

With dynamic messaging, advertisers can customize the content of an ad and incorporate a call-to-action on the fly.

"For example, in a Web ad, a retailer can populate the creative with a map and directions to the closest store, while on mobile, the ad would show the closest store's phone number with click-to-call functionality," Mr. Goodman said.

Looking back, 2008 marked a turning point in online advertising.

Despite the slowing of growth in overall advertising spending, online and mobile have finally achieved their places at the table in mainstream media plans and continue to prove their value relative to traditional media.

It was also a year for increased public scrutiny of industry practices as the digital medium achieves scale and prominence with advertisers.

1020 Placecast says that it expects marketers who need to do more with less will put pressure on agencies, media providers, publishers and measurement firms to deliver more value.

At the same time, tough market conditions always produce new ways of solving old problems.

The company predicts big opportunities for advertisers to find new ways to drive better performance for their campaigns.

The report identified six key trends for 2009.

1. The value of consumer data is questionable
2009 will mark the year advertisers begin to look for alternatives to collecting and mining consumer data to improve the performance of campaigns.

For several years, online and mobile marketers have attempted to incorporate increasingly large amounts of consumer data into the marketing equation with the goal of improving targeting and performance.

Unfortunately, advertiser reviews of this approach are nearly universal: "anticipointed."

We now find ourselves in wave 2.0 of this effort in which firms are undertaking predictive modeling, attempting to analyze even more data in order to predict behaviors.

However, according to 1020 Placecast, these efforts will continue to disappoint and 2009 will mark the year advertisers begin to look for and incorporate new, non-consumer data sources for improving the performance of campaigns.

"Placecast takes advantage of location information available from our publishers in categories like travel, events, real estate and weather, and matches that location data with the most appropriate ad for a consumer then returns the 'localized' ad," Mr. Goodman said.

"This allows us to deliver the most relevant ads without collecting any user data, a privacy issue that has been covered extensively in 2008," he said. "As a result we have seen increases in CTR of 1.5 to four times that of a standard ad."

2. The Web will be connected to the physical world
Until recently, the Web was built to ignore physical location.

Several recent developments make clear that, beginning in 2009, location will drive the next wave of innovation on the Web.

According to 1020 Placecast, these announcements include Geode for Firefox, a plug-in that allows the popular browser to determine and share the consumer's location; Google's releases of Android, Chrome and the Gears Location API, all of which incorporate location data; Fire Eagle from Yahoo for location data management; more than 500 iPhone applications now using GPS location data as a critical component; and the news that Microsoft Windows 7 will include location data at the operating-system level for any application.

All of these innovations and others still to come will bring location information into the mainstream Web-browsing experience, providing consumers with a way to connect their online and mobile experiences to the real world.

For advertisers, this trend presages a host of new services launching in 2009 using location in various ways.

Initial, simple applications from marketers will include couponing and advertising to users in proximity to potential offerings of interest, such as stores, cafés and restaurants.

More advanced approaches will apply this new trove of location data to improve relevance, understand consumer intent and profile audiences.

In the long term, we can expect location data to be incorporated into search algorithms as another way of increasing relevance, and also into performance marketing, where better relevance will drive significant improvements in performance, according to 1020 Placecast.

3. Heightened privacy concerns plant the seed for regulation
2008 will certainly go down as a year of turmoil for data mining models like NebuAd and Adzilla, and also as a year that brought small victories for privacy advocates.

1020 Placecast predicts that a new administration in Washington will bring new FTC regulators and a climate that favors more standards and regulation.

Despite the proactive efforts of industry organizations like the IAB and the NAI, Placecast predicts that 2009 will kick off a wave of new discussions about the collection and application of consumer data, with the balance of power shifting away from the advertising industry and towards the consumer.

President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Tom Wheeler, former head of trade lobby CTIA: The Wireless Association, as a technology adviser also indicates that marketers can expect to see a particular emphasis on mobile technology for the new administration.

"Placecast is able to leverage the power of location without mining any user data, by customizing ads on the mobile Web or in applications using anonymous location information that we have collected from our publishers," Mr. Goodman said.

"In terms of push mobile messaging campaigns, it is important to always adhere to MMA standards and opt-in requirements to ensure a positive user experience," he said.

4. View-through metrics gain traction in the downturn
Down economies focus more attention and diligence on understanding the drivers of performance for online campaigns.

2009 will see more mainstream adoption of view-through as a complement to traditional metrics such as click-through.

View-through -- also referred to as post-impression measurement -- is a method for gauging the impact of an ad that a consumer sees but does not click on. It works by recording the exposure of a consumer to a specific display ad, then measures when that consumer returns to the advertiser's site in a later session.

View-through gives marketers an ability to attribute value to the many impressions they deliver which do not immediately trigger an action.

With average click-through rates on wired Web display ads dropping below 0.1 percent on average, marketers are recognizing that view-through provides a more complete understanding of how campaigns really drive traffic and how impressions lift brand metrics such as awareness, favorability and intent.

View-through metrics would also enhance the tracking capabilities of banner ads deployed on mobile Web/WAP sites.

"View-through conversion refers to a consumer who receives an ad impression or multiple impressions and does not click on the ad, but at a later point in time the same consumer performs a specific online conversion activity with the advertiser such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, registering to receive communications, et cetera," Mr. Goodman said.

"View-through is definitely gaining traction online as a better method for attributing the contribution to a consumer's purchase, and many mobile ad providers are beginning to recognize the power of view-through," he said. "However, without a universally applicable cookie to use as a basis for measuring the consumer's eventual action, today it is not feasible to measure view-through.

"Definitely watch for more players in the mobile space to launch innovative mobile cookie solutions in 2009."

5. The accessibility of display ad inventory will increase dramatically
The combination of a downturn in the economy and continued automation of media planning and buying tools means that buyers will have easy access to display inventory in 2009.

Even as broad networks consolidate or compress, exchanges are providing easy access for buyers to find reach and efficiency.

The major PC Internet players, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL, are capturing the largest share of available remnant inventory across their ad network offerings.

These companies are also investing heavily in the mobile space.

Exchanges will continue to refine their operational and business models.

With the impressions themselves becoming ever more liquid and accessible through networks and exchanges, inventory value will be driven by services and technology.

Next-generation targeting approaches, which go beyond content and behavioral methods, will capture the attention of the buying community.

Improved efficiency and valuable insights from reporting will give buyers the ability to focus media purchases even more efficiently over time, according to 1020 Placecast.

6. Online and mobile video consumption will continue to grow
In 2009, we will see significant increases in the online distribution and consumption of professionally-produced video content. This includes the mobile Web.

This top-tier video content will garner a majority of the video advertising spend.

CPMs may contract slightly with broader distribution as audiences expect to find the content where they spend their time online.

But with consumers in control and watching more video online and on mobile devices, overall CPMs will remain quite healthy for video advertising in top content.

Several factors are fueling this trend: first, major advertisers are now thinking about online and mobile video at the creative stage and producing purpose-built material for the Web when they develop creative for TV.

Secondly, production costs are also coming down, and we are beginning to see critical mass around a standard set of technologies and tools.

Lastly, as more dollars migrate away from TV advertising because of the high cost, online and mobile video will become the beneficiary as it creates a similar immersive customer experience with TV and Hollywood appeal.

Sites like Hulu provide TV-oriented brand advertisers with a captive audience, an example of why video will become a mainstream part of brand marketer advertising budgets in 2009, according to 1020 Placecast.

Avis is one brand that has tapped 1020 Placecast for a multichannel ad campaign.

"Placecast's platform enables advertisers to reach their target audience and run integrated campaigns across multiple digital channels -- the Web, mobile, Wi-Fi and email -- all with a single buy," Mr. Goodman said. "We're able to bring mainstream Web advertisers today to mobile as part of a larger buy and deliver insights about that campaign's performance in each medium.

"As an example, we recently ran a cross-platform campaign for Avis that spanned both Web and mobile publishers in the Placecast Network," he said. "While it was a unified campaign, we were able to deliver different creative customized to a user's location and the device."