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Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn and Zynga: When an IPO Is Like a Bar Mitzvah

Growing pains: Internet start-ups feel them too--and in a big way, when they're valued in billions. Among Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon, and Zynga, who will first become a man? (Yes, we push the bar mitzvah metaphor, but we didn't start it!)

Every new day seems to bring fresh news about Internet companies mulling, planning, or avoiding initial public offerings. Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon, and now Zynga--the list goes on. “For many of these companies, an IPO seems more like a bar mitzvah,” an anonymous social media investor told the New York Times, in today's piece about how Zynga is in no hurry to go public. “It’s not very life-altering in the end, but rather something to get through.”

What are the varying IPO strategies of each of these companies? When is an IPO a simple rite of passage, and when is it something more? Is an IPO really like a bar mitzvah? An investigation.

Facebook

The largest IPO-related news of the last week has come from Facebook. As the privately-held company has grown and become more profitable, a shadow network of trading in its stock has sprung up, prompting investigation by the SEC. (If a company is deemed to have more than 499 shareholders, it must go public). With last week's news of Goldman Sachs's $450 million investment in the company, analysts have said the company is on its way to a Goldman-managed IPO. In the past, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated no eagerness to go public, once saying, "Don't hold your breath." An IPO brings an onslaught of cash, with accompanying financial freedom--but it also brings all manner of public scrutiny. The Goldman Sachs investment has been a double-edged sword; on the one hand, it has given Facebook a massive infusion of money, while allowing it to remain private. On the other, the investment in itself has brought further scrutiny into the company's financials (and leaked Goldman documents have unveiled new details, for instance, that Facebook appears to have a 30% profit margin), virtually assuring an IPO.

For Facebook, its impending IPO--coming in 2012, most likely--has indeed been something like a bar mitzvah--awkward, tentative steps into adulthood. Zuckerberg may be torn between clinging to the company's adolescent vibe, while wanting the respectability that comes with a Goldman Sachs-backed public offering. Adulthood wins out in the end: After all, no longer do Zuck's business cards read, "I'm CEO...bitch."

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has swooped in as the first likely major Internet company IPO of 2011. it might seem surprising that LinkedIn would forge ahead of Facebook, which is so much larger and more heavily trafficked. But LinkedIn, as a social network for professionals, has always had something of an avuncular vibe to the younger-seeming Facebook, so it makes a certain amount of sense that it might hit this milestone sooner. “For us, first and foremost, it’s about our mission, which is to connect the world’s professionals,” CEO Jeff Weiner toldBloomberg in August. “An IPO, being public, raising money, that’s really a tactic that helps us ultimately achieve that long term objective.” For LinkedIn, did the rumblings of Facebook's Goldman Sachs investment prompt its own decision about an IPO? LinkedIn denied it to the Wall Street Journal last week, saying the decision about its own IPO had come in the fourth quarter of 2010, before the Facebook news. "Anybody who is suggesting timing is a function of Facebook misses the point completely," said one of those fabled "persons familiar with the matter," adding, "This has been in the works for months." If LinkedIn is a bar mitzvah boy, it's the one who has studied Torah eagerly and calmly throughout the seventh grade. But the fact that LinkedIn will soon become a man among boys hasn't led to a buttoned-up culture around the office, according to reports. Weiner recently instituted a "high-five zone" in front of his office. "Anyone who walks through the square, which is nearly impossible to avoid, must give a high five to others nearby, a sign declares," according to VentureBeat.

Groupon

Groupon had a chance to take a different route. In November, Google (itself a company that famously went through IPO growing pains) made a reported offer for the company for $6 billion. As soon as Groupon walked away from the deal, an IPO seemed likely, many outlets reported. By the end of December, Groupon had attracted many big institutional investors, and was "preparing to go public as soon as 2011," reported the Times. The company also hired a chief financial officer, Jason Child, who had previously overseen finances at Amazon.com. Like Facebook, Groupon's recent inflow of investment dollars at once helps the company remain private for a while, while also indicating an impending IPO. Paul Bard, and IPO analyst at Renaissance Capital, recently told MarketWatch that he thought Facebook and Groupon were on similar timetables, with Groupon likely to go public first.

Groupon's strategy is somewhat hard to read here; walking away from a $6 billion deal is enough to make anyone scratch their heads. Only time will tell whether Groupon made the right decision, refusing to sell itself short, or whether it lost a major opportunity.

Zynga

Zynga, the makers of popular social games FarmVille and CityVille, made headlinesyesterday simply for indicating that an IPO was not likely this year. Zynga's founder and chief executive Mark Pincus has spoken in no uncertain terms about his skepticism of outside investors, and his desire to keep his hand on the wheel. "It was really important to me to keep control of the company," he said at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in September. "If you want to build a house you're gonna live in," he said, "you need to have total control, or you have death by a thousand compromises." He added to his audience of tech entrepreneurs: "I would argue we should take half the valuation, if we can keep control of our companies." Pincus is like the bar mitzvah boy who is skeptical that you can wake up a boy one day, a man the next. He urges companies to invest in themselves, reaching adulthood gradually, and on their own terms. Though Zynga is in no rush to go public, it has indeed welcomed some investors, inevitably. According to the Times, it's gotten $360 million in funding rounds from various sources, including DST Global, the Russian firm that has invested extensively in Facebook. While Zynga is growing fast--300 million active users, with four of the five most popular social games--it is still undergoing growing pains. For one thing, it's heavily dependent on Facebook; almost three-quarters of its business is funneled through the social network. Zynga is working towards bringing its games to other platforms: Yahoo, the iPhone, the iPad. But as recently as September, Pincus had to admit that he didn't see his company as an indispensable part of the Internet landscape: "I think people can still imagine life without playing our games," he said at TechCrunch Disrupt. In October, he told Fast Company that he wanted to build "an Internet treasure."

Like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Groupon before it, Zynga is likely to find that it has to go public eventually, if it wants to get some of that bar mitzvah gilt.

BY DAVID ZAX via : http://www.fastcompany.com/

Social Network Ad Spending to Approach $1.7 Billion This Year

6.7% of all US online ad spending to go toward social networks this year

Social network advertising is getting renewed attention in 2010. The US’s gradual economic recovery, combined with marketers’ incessant focus on reaching consumers in social media, has led companies to make big increases in social network ad spending in the first half of 2010. eMarketer estimates US advertisers will spend $1.68 billion on social networking sites this year, a more than 20% increase over 2009. Spending will rise even further by 2011 to more than $2 billion. In December 2009, eMarketer forecast $1.3 billion in social network ad spending for 2010. Strong performance from online ad spending in general, and Facebook in particular, has resulted in the increased forecast.

US Social Network Ad Spending, 2009-2011 (billions and % change)

Facebook will receive half of all social network ad spending in the US while MySpace continues to diminish in importance. Twitter, which finally launched its ad business earlier this year, is incorporated into eMarketer’s forecast for the first time. While spending on the microblogging service will be low in 2010, the potential for 2011 and beyond could be dramatic if it proves that its “resonance” model of measuring advertising effectiveness works. Spending on social network advertising will grow even more quickly elsewhere in the world. In 2010, eMarketer estimates just over half of social network ad spending worldwide will come from the US, but 2011 will bring a reversal in that proportion.

Social Network Ad Spending Worldwide, US vs. Non-US, 2009-2011 (billions and % of total)

Another important development in the social network space is the role of online social games and applications. Advertising is not a primary revenue stream for game companies such as Zynga or Playdom, but their large audiences are drawing the interest of marketers. eMarketer expects such companies will attract $293 million in spending worldwide in 2011, up from $220 million in 2010.

Unlocking the elusive potential of social networks - via McKinsey Quarterly

To realize the marketing potential of virtual activities, you have to make them truly useful for consumers.

Unlocking the elusive potential of social networks article, marketing with social networks, Marketing

There is much hype about social networks and their potential impact on marketing, so many companies are diligently establishing presences on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. Yet the true value of social networks remains unclear, and while common wisdom suggests that they should be tremendous enablers and amplifiers of word of mouth, few consumer companies have unlocked this potential. At Liberty Interactive, which comprises many specialty e-commerce companies, we wrestle daily with the question of how to realize the promise of social networks.

We do have pages on Facebook and active feeds on Twitter, but we never thought those steps alone would make a big difference to the performance of our companies. More recently, we have adopted a new mind-set: we think of word of mouth generated on social networks as a distinct form of media. This idea is more than a semantic detail. When you think of word of mouth as media, it becomes a form of content, and businesses can apply tried-and-true content-management practices and metrics to it. In addition, word of mouth generated by social networks is a form of marketing that must be earned—unlike traditional advertising, which can be purchased. We therefore concluded that we could succeed only by being genuinely useful to the individuals who initiate or sustain virtual world-of-mouth conversations.

So what does it mean to be useful in a world of virtual conversations enabled by social networks? Obviously, there are no generic solutions, and each company will need to invent and discover what makes sense for its unique situation. We have, however, learned a few lessons that can be encapsulated in two primary insights. First, a powerful way for a brand to be useful in the virtual world is to confer social importance on its users. Second, “virtual items” are critical to stimulating social interactions that may in turn generate word of mouth.

The power of importance

An effective way for a brand to be useful in the context of social networks is to make people who originate a word-of-mouth conversation seem important within their own social environment. Recognition by peers is a powerful motivator, and brands that allow users to gain it deliver real perceived value. When users publicize that recognition, it translates into word of mouth. Companies can confer this kind of importance—for example, by issuing achievement “badges” that users can post to their Facebook profiles or by deploying leader boards or achievement scores of all types. As Web sites evolve to become increasingly dynamic experiences that let people interact in real time, the value to core users of being recognized for their prominence in a community will only increase.

We’ve also learned never to underestimate the value consumers place on opportunities to brag online about their achievements. That’s made significantly easier through the clever integration of a Web site with Facebook and Twitter. We see this phenomenon daily—for example, on the forums of our Bodybuilding.com site. When members boast of reaching their target weight or other goals with help from Bodybuilding.com workouts, we receive authentic and credible word-of-mouth endorsements at almost no cost. In fact, if recent behavioral research is accurate, these experiences can create “contagions” in which the behavior of users is mirrored by their networks of friends, amplifying the word-of-mouth effect and reflecting well on the underlying brands.

The allure of virtual items

It’s our strong intuition that virtual items play an important role in facilitating virtual word of mouth. This belief, at its core, is based on observing user behavior. While the notion of virtual goods—nonphysical objects used in online communities and games—still puzzles many executives, it’s quite apparent that consumers love them. People acquire or compete for virtual items obsessively on Foursquare, Zynga, and many other sites. It is estimated that virtual goods have become a very real $5 billion industry worldwide.

So why do consumers pay real money for online objects that don’t actually exist? Their motives reinforce our notion that users seek online importance: they purchase virtual goods primarily for self-expression (such as virtual houses or virtual gifts) and for recognition (such as virtual badges for becoming, say, the “mayor” of a bar on Foursquare). These behaviors are too widespread and intense to be fads, and marketers need to recognize them as meaningful. Brands should actively experiment with ways to use virtual goods as catalysts of word-of-mouth media.

Virtual gifting is becoming an important consumer activity among Facebook members. Today, much of this activity is free, but Facebook is introducing a virtual-currency “credit” system that will allow sellers to get real dollars for their gifts and other items. In the context of a social network, it is not a stretch to conceive of virtual gifts as important objects, especially as their availability can be strictly limited. Just think about the fervor consumers accord collectibles of all kinds, from baseball cards to dolls to coins. If virtual items prove similarly desirable, they are likely to be a big deal for consumers and marketers, as well as a great tool to create useful word-of-mouth media. We’ve also found that basic laws of consumer behavior still apply: consumers love a bargain, and companies should take full advantage of social networks as powerful notification tools. Users can be alerted to sales or to the expiration of a promotion, but companies must be mindful that these feeds and tweets are designed as catalysts to generate virtual word-of-mouth media. They are not social-media junk mail, but legitimate content objects—actual pieces of media that we want the initial recipients to distribute to their friends.

One final recommendation: no gimmicks. Forget dancing monkeys, artificial contests, or stupid tricks; they add no value and waste people’s time. A commitment to being useful in social-media activities means a commitment to creating only high-quality interactions. Again, regarding word of mouth as a media product makes it easier to define what quality means for your particular activities. There are clearly many ways for brands to make themselves useful to consumers, so managing virtual word of mouth goes well beyond maintaining a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Exactly how far remains to be seen, and companies should apply an experimental mind-set, while being careful not to overinvest. Word-of-mouth marketing through social networks could emerge as an important tool in the marketer’s arsenal. That will depend on whether marketers can tame the fundamentally unpredictable and serendipitous nature of word of mouth without losing what makes it so valuable in the first place—its authenticity.

via : https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Unlocking_the_elusive_potential_of_social_networks_2623

Social Net Growth: No End in Sight

Social network usage will rise sharply in 2010, according to a report by eMarketer. The number of people visiting social networks on a monthly basis in the U.S. will reach 127 million, or about 57 percent of all domestic Internet users, by the end of 2010, a 16 percent increase over 2009.

By 2014, two-thirds (65.8 percent) of U.S. Internet users will be regular visitors to social networks, the firm reported.

"Marketers on social networks are on the cusp of something truly exciting: a critical mass of engaged consumers who are willing to participate, share and spread the word about the companies and brands they love," said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer.  "But if there ever were a time to assure consumers that their information is safe and secure, and to make sure that their brand interactions on social networks are positive, that time is now," she added.

Google searches for a way into social networking

 

Google, Facebook

 

Schmidt, well-known for being a straight talker, failed to scotch the well-circulated rumour, simply saying he "had nothing to announce". No denial there then.Matt Brittin, Google's UK chief, also had a similar "no comment" response in an interview with The Daily Telegraph last week. He went one step further though, arguing that the global market was big enough for more than one social network.

"Facebook is an absolute phenomenon but there are other social networks which are successful too. We've got Orkut, which is fantastically successful in India and Brazil. And Bebo is successful in other countries," he said. "It's a phenomenon that is with us to stay. I think what we'll see is the internet becoming more of a social place, as well as people being social within the context of social networks." As Brittin suggested, Google Me would not be the first social network attempted by the company. As he said, it already has Orkut, which is very popular in South America and earlier this year it launched the somewhat ill-received Google Buzz.

The latter, which gave users a ready-made circle of friends based on their most frequent email and chat contacts in Gmail, was heavily criticised because it revealed to the world who each user emailed the most without prior permission. Subsequently Google apologised and disabled that particular feature of Buzz. There is very little known about how Google Me would work. Technology pundits have been speculating wildly – with talk of a service which pulls together all of the Google properties, such as YouTube, maps and profiles, into one central hub.

Speculation aside, what is really crucial to understand, is why it is so necessary for Google to crack social networking, the main piece of the digital jigsaw which has so far escaped it. When Google began crawling the web in 1998 – building its reputation as the most thorough search engine online – the internet was a largely open place. There were no massive walled gardens. It could get access to the majority of data it needed to in order to make its now hugely successful advertising proposition valuable and valid. Fast forward 12 years and Facebook is on the verge of its 500 millionth profile being created and accounts for a huge amount of time people spend online. It is one big online walled garden which Google cannot get access to. Inside those walls is some of the most valuable data available anywhere on the web – because it's personal. People have chosen to post that information about themselves and it's on this hugely insightful base that Facebook is trying to build its advertising proposition upon. Yes, it may have had to do some backtracking with its recent privacy settings backlash, after users were forced to make certain things known about themselves, but this is a new web with new rules. Google's model of crawling the web – which means collecting information about people based on their web activities across sites it can monitor – and then selling advertising against those profiles, is still hugely lucrative. However, Google has a declining ability to see people's true behaviour, and even character, and needs to finally crack social networking's true commercial value, before Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, does. That's if it wants to stay ahead.

It's not just Google that is trying to unlock the value of social networks for its commercial gain – many other businesses will also need social networks on their radar. A new study published last week by Regus, the office supply company, found that 40pc of businesses around the world have successfully used social networks to win new customers. However, that figure falls to 33pc when applied to the UK market. Regus analysed 15,000 companies' activities around the world and found that companies were using Facebook to pitch for new business and communicate with potential customers – and actually succeeding.The survey also found that 27pc of businesses worldwide have set aside a proportion of their marketing budget to invest in members of their staff to build a strong brand presence on social networks. This research clearly shows that display search advertising is not the only way to spend money from the digital pot as there can more meaningful methods of spreading the investment – both inside and out of the web's walled gardens. Businesses must be committed to this type of activity though. It is not enough to have a token scour of potential customers' profiles or brand pages, or sporadically update their own company profiles. Companies will only get as much out as they put in. Old rules apply in that respect. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, told companies last October at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco: "Keep up with it, every day, three or four times a day," she said. As regularly as people interact with their personal profiles on Facebook, businesses must do the same. Google knows this and that's why it needs to crack this space – both for its own search engine's visibility levels and the chance to enter a new market. But it is also very familiar with social network's biggest barrier to striking it really rich: privacy.

Facebook may have simplified and slightly tweaked its privacy settings in May but confidence was shaken across its membership. Concerns about privacy on the social network were running so high that 60pc of the 1,588 Facebook users questioned by Sophos, a computer security organisation, in May before the changes were announced, said that they were considering deleting their accounts on the social networking site. A further 16pc said they had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data, while a quarter said that they would not be quitting the social networking site, which has almost 500m users worldwide. If Google can really learn from both its own mistakes post the Buzz debacle and Facebook's blunders, Google Me could become a very powerful alternative to the biggest social network in the world.There is still a small chink in the mighty Facebook's armour and Google needs to seize it before the moment fully passes. With its powerful network of sites, which millions of people use every day, it certainly has the infrastructure. Businesses need to keep their eyes peeled and get in on what could be the next big digital chapter. And fast.

via telegraph.co.uk

 

How Consumers Interact with Brands on Social Networks

Consumers do want relationships

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The social networking audience in the US has reached critical mass. eMarketer estimates that 57.5% of all US Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010. By 2014, nearly two-thirds of Internet users will be on board.

Marketers have been chasing this audience for several years, but the question remains: Do consumers notice, or care?

“Those who still think that social network users are too busy engaging with friends to notice marketers must change their viewpoint,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Brand Interactions on Social Networks.” “Brand interactions are real, valuable and growing. “

According to a February 2010 survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey, a market research firm, 33% of Facebook users have become fans of brands on the network.

US Facebook Users Who Are Fans of Brands on Facebook, February 2010 (% of respondents)

Another survey, by Edison Research, found that 16% of social network users had friended brands there. And half (51%) had done so on Twitter.

Coupons remain a leading driver of brand interactions in social networks. Learning about sales and new products is also a strong motivator for people to interact with companies in social media. Beyond the tangibles, such as coupons, consumers do gain positive feelings about a brand as a result of their interactions.

Still, social networks are not seen as primary research sources when consumers are looking to buy. Although people are very inclined to take advice from friends and family about products they are interested in, they are not nearly as likely to seek out their social network friends when they are researching online.

According to a study by PowerReviews and the e-tailing group, only 3% of online buyers said they sought recommendations from social network friends first, compared with 57% who started with search engines.

Sources Used to Begin a Search for Information on Branded Products* According to US Online Buyers**, March 2010 (% of respondents)

“More than half of all Internet users now use social networks, and the percentage of social network users who talk about companies, either in organic conversations or on branded company pages, is growing,” said Ms. Williamson. “Consumers do pay attention and they do value positive interactions with companies.

“But while people trust their friends for advice and use social networks as part of their research process, social networks are long way from replacing search, if they ever will, as a source of information leading to a purchase.”

Social networks overtake search engines in UK – should Google be worried?


Hitwise, the web analytics firm, has a report out today that claims that social networks now receive more UK Internet visits than search engines.

Which, if the case, would imply that Google should be considerably worried about its future battle with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, as online marketing spend will surely follow Internet foot-through. Or does it? According to Hitwise, during May, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, representing the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK. At this point, it’s worth noting that Google-owned YouTube is lumped into the social networks group – is YouTube really a social network? – so that in itself significantly skews the results. But, nonetheless, social, and in particular Facebook and Twitter, continue in its ascendancy.

Facebook now accounts for 55% of all UK social networking visits, almost three times as many as the next most popular social network, which Hitwise pegs as YouTube. Twitter, on the other hand, is now the third most popular social network in the UK, putting it ahead of Bebo (no surprise) and MySpace, which seems pretty significant considering how popular the Murdoch-owned property once was with Brits.

Robin Goad, Research Director for Hitwise, comments: “although social networks and search engines perform different functions, they both act as gateways to the wider Internet. This data perfectly illustrates the key role that social media now plays in so much online behavior.” But the money isn’t yet following, with Goad noting that “the majority of online marketing spend is currently diverted towards search, and this is likely to remain the case in the short to medium term.” Search remains the “primary source of traffic for most websites”, particularly e-commerce, such as online retail, finance and travel. “Many marketers and brand owners have yet to grasp the full potential of social media marketing, but spending on the channel will increase as more proven success stories emerge.” Success stories, you say.

But can social media marketing really overcome the issue of intent? Too often, ads on YouTube and Facebook work like traditional advertising, forcing themselves onto people and interrupting the conversation or getting in the way of the content. Not only is it an issue of obtrusiveness but that advertising is out of kilter with the user’s self interest. However, when a user searches on Google, there is an intended action at the end of it, which is very often making a purchase or researching one. In which case, the interests of the user and advertiser are perfectly aligned.

Nobody is interrupting anyone. Regardless of today’s report, it’s only once somebody really figures out how to tap into intent on Facebook that Google should be worried.

Very worried.

Social Media Ad Spending Lags

Its use is exploding, but ad spending in the sector continues to be a blip on the radar for most brands

adweek/photos/stylus/110151-SocialL.jpg
Social media use is exploding, but ad spending in the sector continues to be a blip on the radar for most brands.
 
Razorfish, one of the largest digital ad spenders, compiled data on its 2009 digital ad spending. It found that social media display advertising made up just 3 percent of its clients' budgets. Non-display in social media accounted for another 1 percent. The figures pale in comparison to the time spent online. According to comScore, U.S. Internet users spent 11 percent of their time online in 2011 on social media sites.
 
The spending figures reflect that, all the chatter about Facebook, Twitter and iPhone notwithstanding, online media is dominated by traditional vehicles: vertical sites, ad networks, portals and search accounted for 88 percent of buys. Vertical sites got the biggest share of spending, 31 percent. Search was next with a 25 percent share and ad networks received 20 percent. Other emerging media remain blips: mobile accounted for just 2 percent of Razorfish's spending.
 
Like other agencies, Razorfish has found social media is less of an ad medium and more of a platform for building communities. The spending doesn't take the form of ad buys but rather the labor to build a Facebook page and staff it to respond to consumers, said Jeremy Lockhorn, vp of emerging media at Razorfish.
 
"A lot of the display media in social media is very cheap," he said. "More importantly, a lot of the money going into social is people powered, like blogger outreach. You don't see that in the media spend."
 
More money will flow into social in 2010, but Lockhorn believes it will continue to be in the earned media space rather than paid.
 
Overall, Razorfish saw signs of an online ad recovery. After dipping by 13 percent in 2008, ad spending for clients rebounded to increase by 4 percent in 2009. Razorfish expects growth to pick up in 2010. The average CPM paid was between $7 and $8. The median was $5. Razorfish said it expects CPM prices to rise in 2010.
 
Search occupied less of the spending pie at Razorfish. In 2008, the agency spent 37 percent of client budgets there, but in 2009 that dropped to 25 percent. The shop attributed that to normally high-spending clients in financial services and health pulling back budgets. Plus, at one point last year, pharmaceutical firms took down their ads after the FDA sent out warning letters. The losses in those sectors weren't offset by travel and retail, where spending was flat.

Portals fell out of favor, with spending dropping from 16 percent to 12 percent overall. Ad networks continued to hold strong, increasing from 12 percent of spending to 20 percent. Ad exchanges, which only got going late in 2009, accounted for 2 percent of expenditures. Lockhorn predicted more money would flow through them in 2010.
 
Despite excitement over new interactive formats, the overwhelming bulk of Razorfish's spending (77 percent) remained in standard display units. Rich media accounted for another 15 percent, with video at 8 percent.
 
The report, compiled based on spending data and a survey of Razorfish's media department, reveals some interesting impressions of digital media. Google, despite its efforts to be more than "just search," isn't viewed highly in other areas. Razorfish's media planners gave it the highest marks on a four-star system for search, but doled out single stars in other areas, ranging from performance display to video to mobile.
 
Looking ahead, Razorfish's list of publishers to watch includes Facebook, mobile ad network Greystripe, Hulu, Pandora and, perhaps most surprisingly, MySpace. On the latter, Razorfish praised the News Corp. property for mining profile data for ad targeting.