As for 2010 and beyond, clearly we’ll see growth of the online ad exchange for non premium display inventory, but I’d take this one step further and posit that 2010 will see the advent of ”Local” meets the “Online Display Ad Exchange”. 

Let’s look at Local first.  As this theDeal.com article mentions, companies like Yelp, Foursquare and others have captured mind share quite nicely as leading local consumer web services which are attracting the attention of potential acquirers and venture investors alike.  What do these startups have that is so attractive?  Is their user base?  Revenues?  Technology?  I’d argue that it is none of those, rather, it is the data they have accrued or will continue to accrue via highly scalable and viral social gaming (in the case of FourSquare) or seo/ugc (in the case of Yelp) methods.  While geo targeting has been around for a while via products like Digital Element which provide data streams that enable somewhat crude IP address-based geo targeting, these new entrants have or will have two highly sought after data attributes when it comes to local: purchase intent and freshness.  This is why Google, a cash machine which thrives on purchase intent and freshness in its core search business, is interested in acquiring startups that bring viral, scalable and low-cost generators of such data so that it can further expand its targeting efforts into the lucrative local ad market.

Now what about online ad exchanges like Yahoo’s Right Media or Google’s DoubleClick?   As many of the recent interviews and posts on AdExchanger note, there is an increasing trend around the use of data to augment the identification and prioritization of which exchange based impression to buy and how much to bid to win it.   Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) like Turn, Invite Media, DataXu, Triggit and others are providing agencies and brands the tools and mechanisms to leverage data to make smarter and more granular ad buys. 

So how does Foursquare meet Right Media?  It happens via innovative startups, ad agencies and advertisers who look to innovate the ~$60b direct marketing category by taking advantage of this tsunami of local data coming from either consumer web services like the ones mentioned above, mashed up forms of more traditional sources of offline data and/or the plethora of gps/location data streaming from services like Twitter, Facebook or smartphones.   I believe 2010 will see some exciting new developments at this intersection and I’m happy to compare notes with others, just drop in a comment below to start the conversation.

The term “Enterprise 2.0” was coined back in April 2006 when Andrew MacAfee wrote this Sloan Management Review Article.  Since, then MacAfee has become almost synonymous with the term Enterprise 2.0 and is even coming out with a new book on the topic to be published in late November 2009.  His blog is one of the most respected on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 and he tweets regularly.  I took Andrew’s very first graduate school class he taught in a class called Technology, Operations and Research back at HBS Spring of 2000 and I always thought he had a knack for sensing early technology trends.

One of my favorite posts of his includes his response to a ZDNet post that states  Enterprise 2.0 is a crock.   I like it as it paints six specific use cases around real world examples of well known companies using various facets of enterprise 2.0 to solve customer pain points.

Another favorite of mine is this post where he describes ten criteria for a successful enterprise 2.0 initiative.  This strikes me as a practical and useful framework for how and why some companies are succeeding with enterprise 2.0 solutions. 

I mention all of this as I intend to cover some trends on this category in my blog here because I’m a real believer in the disruptive potential enterprise 2.0 has.  It really can change the way each of us communicates and works every day, much like how email, broadband internet and IM did.  The above set of links provides a starting point on what enterprise 2.0 is all about and you can check out many other links on MacAfee’s blog for other resources.   For a more hands on interaction, you may want to also check out one of the innovators in the enterprise 2.0 cateogory, CubeTree.  My colleague, Gus Tai, and I led a Series A investment in CubeTree on the behalf of Trinity Ventures back in March of 2008.  CubeTree is focused on disrupting the static (and typically useless) corporate intranet with a next generation social business software suite that is people centric (vs. document centric like SharePoint) and is comprised of an activity feed (similar to what you’d see on your Facebook activity feed), wikis, profiles and other features.   You can get a sample of what real enterprise 2.0 innovation looks like by signing up for a free CubeTree account here.  You can also hear more about it via SAP, one of CubeTree’s reference customers.

I’m interested to hear what readers think 2010 will hold for enterprise 2.0.  I personally think we will see some interesting events occur that help the enterprise 2.0 category accelerate faster than what Gartner may believe in their July 2009 hype cycle report.  This is based not only on what I’m seeing at CubeTree from a board member vantage point, but also extrapolating from the following macro tailwind trends to peer into my crystal ball for some Enterprise 2.0 in 2010 predictions:

1. Twitter continues to grow like a weed.  This perpetuates the value of microblogging, status updating and real time ambient awareness.  Their recent $100m financing at a valuation of a billion dollars should help a bit.   My 2010 prediction is that Twitter figures out their revenue model which further perpetuates their success and, as a derivative effect, enterprise 2.0 adoption.
2. Tens of millions of marketing dollars (if not more) will be spent around promotion of SharePoint 2010  and Google Wave.  Both of these products talk a lot about the various value proposition tenants of enterprise 2.0 including aspects of collaboration and real time.   These marketing dollars will continue to imprint broader enterprise 2.0 awareness upon customers.  My 2010 prediction is that these products will be substantive and innovative but yet still fall short as they remain either too professional services intensive (SharePoint) or too techno centric (Wave) for companies looking for practical, scaleable collaboration solutions delivered in a flexible and cost effective manner.
3. Facebook continues to skyrocket and perpetuate the value of social networking.   My 2010 prediction is that we see Facebook file their S1 and get public.  I also predict we’ll soon see this social networking giant reach half a billion users globally next year after hitting a quarter billion this summer (note, there were one billion web users in the world as of Dec 2008).   Nothing like a hot Facebook IPO and ~40% global penetration (assuming continued growth of the overall global web user base to 1.25 billion in 2010) to continue real gale force like tailwinds for enterprise 2.0.

What do you think?  Other predictions for enterprise 2.0 in 2010?

“Marketing Automation” is certainly not a new category.  There are lots of existing resources on the web today that outline the latest trends and companies.  (for instance, one of  Trinity Ventures portfolio companies I’m involved with, Tippit, offers this comprehensive resource center.)   But, in a nutshell, here is a quick recap of the evolution of this category and where we are today:

1.  The first wave was automating email campaigns.  Vendors provided templates and workflow to push large volumes of email out and offered the ability to track opens and click throughs.  This wave started gathering steam in 2003/2004.   Companies like ConstantContact got public on this wave.

2.  The second wave was to track website visits.  By tracking visitors to your corporate website and watching what those visitors (and likely potentialy buyers) are pausing  and clicking on started to yield a deeper view on a possible lead.  This wave started to grow in 2005 and 2006.  Companies like LeadLander and DemandBase are players here.

3.  We are currently in the midst of watching the third wave roll out.  This wave offers capability to take email campaigns and website visitors and to score those prospects into various tiers of qualified leads and activity.  These scored leads are fed in a more automated fashion from marketing to the sales department.  The field and/or inside sales team can then view these leads in a dashboard on an account by account basis and see which ones are showing real activity.   While the scoring algorithm is important, the real innovation of this wave is getting sales and marketing to work together as opposed to going off in opposite directions.  This is a good thing which ultimately results in what matters:  increased revenue.   According to analyst Ian Michiels at Aberdeen, about 1500 companies worldwide today deploy these types of solutions from private companies like Eloqua, Marketo, Genius, SilverPop, and NeoLane among others.  Even in the current downturn, there is healthy growth here and we’re likely to see some interesting exits down the road as folks like SalesForce, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle/Siebel look to add to their existing sales automation suites.

So, what’s next?

My bet is that the fourth wave will focus on how b2b marketers and sales teams can tap into the social web for lead generation, lead nurturing and lead monetization.  We are already starting to see this in companies like HootSuite and CoTweet (offers brands a streamlined capability to engage users on Twitter), Gist (on demand rich context around a lead or prospect) and TechValidate (customer-sourced marketing collateral).  Some of the third wave players are starting to make noise about this too.  These thought leaders are productizing what recent studies and books have shown – that is, that a greater personal connection between seller and buyer can leader to increased sales and the social web is making this connection easier to establish (see good synopsis of The FaceBook Era here by recent Trinity Ventures EIR, Sachin Rekhi).  

The opportunity and challenge for the new entrants trying to surf this fourth wave will be to execute aggressively enough to establish a great product and a beachhead of customers such that they stay ahead of incumbents who will inevitably want to add similar functionality over time (as SF.com just demonstrated).  It will be exciting to watch how this fourth wave breaks, feel free to drop in a comment below to share any thoughts or opinions.