In an article from Red Herring titled "Advertising Beyond Search," the rise of online communities and user-generated content is leading to new avenues for advertisers to explore.

Forrester Research estimates that spending for online advertising will reach $26 billion by the year 2010. However, the advertising outlets might not be what you were expecting, as RSS aggregators, podcasts, and blogs are expected to evolve into a lot share of that revenue; 2006's total advertising for RSS, blogs, and podcasts is reported as close to $50 million, while PQ Media declares the numbers for these outlets as only in the $5 million range just 2 years earlier.

According to statistics from Nielsen's NetRatings, the largest social networking site is still MySpace, with 38.4 million registered users. In a very distant second is Blogger -- host of the BRANDEblog -- with 18.5 million, while Classmates Online, YouTube, and MSN Groups round out the Top 5, each in the 10 to 15 million range. But MySpace also holds a unianimous lead in advertising revenue for 2006 with $180 million expected, which eMarketer says is more than the expected 2006 ad-income of Facebook, Friendster, Orkut, and Yahoo 360 combined.

What conclusions can be drawn from this data? Of course that advertising is no longer just print and Internet pop-ups. Advertising, in other words, is and will be everywhere. There will be no escape, as every new media eventually succumbs to available ad-space. But what will be especially attention-worthy, on our end at the very least, is to see where this will take the field of Human Resources.

Will job openings be auto-added into your friend Jim's 3am blog posting? Will you find out about your next freelance assignment in the middle of your sister Rachel's online profile? Things are about to get interesting, methinks.

Labels: Human Resources, MySpace, Online Advertising, RSS