The Five Percent That Matters

I can’t stand "the line." It’s the bane of any trade show I go to.

"People spend online five percent of their time searching, but
search commands over 40 percent of the online advertising market."

Someone has to cite that supposed fact–"the line"–at every Ad:Tech to
illustrate the disconnect between Internet usage and media spending. What kills
me is that they always get away with it.

That’s the start of this column this week, and it might provide fodder for a few others. What about the other 95%? Where does behavioral targeting fit in? How do you build brands online? There are some other great questions to tackle; this column’s not comprehensive. If anything, it’s elementary. An early draft even had a disclaimer apologizing for telling readers what they already know. Yet it does provide a look into what people are really doing online, what drives search, and how search is at the nexus of, well, everything.

Read it all at the MediaPost blog, and let me know what you think.