What’s Next For Internet Advertising? How Far Will These Scary People Push Us? + Lee’s take on TM, GOOG, YHOO, MSFT, OMC, IPG, MDCA, TIVO, NWS, and F

It seems like just a few short years ago our offices and workplaces were safe from the deluge of advertising. But now, with many of us working in front of computers all day, we are constantly being hit by bazillions of ads trying to sell us everything from a new Toyota (TM) hybrid to personal pharmaceuticals we didn’t think we needed but we better check with our spouses or significant others.

Companies like Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT) make many millions of dollars every day off ads they charge others to place on their web sites. The recent recession did not seem to slow these ads down. In fact, shrinking newspaper and magazine readership along with the decline of television viewership has pushed advertisers to the Internet as one of the few ways to get their messages out to the public.

But as we improve our skills of ignoring the constant ads thrown at us on our computers, what’s next for Internet advertising?  Will these ads even get more obnoxious?

Read on for more of Lee’s insights on the future of Internet advertising...

Is this the true future of advertising?

Is this the future of television advertising?

Whenever you do a search using any the leading search engine web pages, text ads will appear. These are a big revenue generator for the companies that run those web search pages. At last report, Google is making enough cash every month on these kinds of text ads to buy their own small country. I hear Iceland is for sale and has been recently marked down again.

I was recently using my computer to watch a new show call Glee from FOX – owned by NewsCorp (NWS) – and every few minutes they stopped the show to hit me with an ad for a cell phone company. You think they would be smart enough to know that I already own a cell phone.  But I don’t own a private island.  So, if they really knew what they were doing, they would have shown an ad selling private islands.

My thinking on these private islands is that there should be a few out there selling really cheap since that Mr. Madoff has probably financially ruined a few former-bazillionaires. There is probably no better time to shop for your own private island. I also think you might be able to almost pay for the island in tax savings if you can claim the island as its own country.

I recently wanted to do some research on a stock I own called Lehman Brothers. When I tried one of those search web pages, it sent me to a finance web page but before I could get to the story I had to sit through a Ford (F) advertisement like I used to see on television. Again… If they knew I was in the market for an island, they should have shown me an ad with some palm-covered oasis down in the Caribbean with a big sign that said, “TAX HAVEN”.

Is North Korean President Kim Il-sung trying to determine who has been sending him those personal enhancement pharmaceutical emails?

Do these guys really have a clue about how
Internet advertising really works?

A few years ago someone who did ads for mortgage loans discovered that if the ad had some dancing people in it, people would pay attention. It is largely believed that these ads, which attracted people more interested in dancing than paying their mortgages, are what brought down the U.S. financial system.

So what’s next for Internet advertising?

We can only shudder to think about this…

The next phase of Internet advertising will begin when advertisers notice that most of us don’t pay attention to most of their ads. This will cause them to stop all the ads and the Internet may cease to exist as we know it since most everything we look at is being paid for by these advertisers.

Then the next phase will be more targeted ads that pay more attention to your specific interests and pull up ads targeted right to you and what you want now. There will be special keystroke monitors built into your web browser so the ad people will know that you just did a search for “Cheap Island Property,” and then all the ads that show up on your screen will be about stuff cheap people like. And maybe a few ads about island property.