To give everyone reading this an update I have began work on my graduate thesis, researching the future of online advertising. I’d like to use this blog as a means of logging some of my thoughts and welcome your comments during this process.

I’m currently working on a survey to collect my primary research for the paper. At the beginning of this project I became very focused on one-to-one communication versus one-to-many as it is now. Basically brands speaking with you as an individual through advertising versus brands speaking to a broad group of people through an ad. I’ve since backed out to look at the bigger picture.

I’m trying to define a few possible directions online advertising may go in the future and to test to see which the public is most comfortable and in favor of as well as what correlations in advertising have been going in these directions over time. The 5 general areas I and with the help of others have come up with at this point are:

• Content Production -(ie. sponsorships, creation of orginal media or entertainment tied to the brand)
• Applications – (ie. utility, utility, the trade personal information for valuable results, interactive)
• Informational – (ie. what we currently have, educational, persuasive)
• Transactional – (ie. Ability to purchase directly from the ad, not linked to online store)
• Conversational – (ie. social streams of advertising)

Through my research I hope to find evidence that will point to the growth of one or multiple trends in these areas and to what degree. You are welcome to throw out ideas and please feel free to direct me to any information you’ve run across relevant to this research.