It’s no secret that the economic downturn affects everyone. Figuring out how is another matter altogether.

For the third time this year, eMarketer has lowered its online advertising spending estimates. Yet the company reports online spending on the whole will increase 8.9% over 2009 (in fact, eight key areas — search, display ads, video, rich media, classifieds, leads generation, sponsorships and email — are estimated to see increases in spending).

This would be great news — if it were true. I’m not sure what kind of rose-colored calculator eMarketer uses for its projections, but the numbers we’re seeing paint a far grimmer picture.

Pubmatic, an online ad optimization services, reported that 2008 Q4 CPMs were down a full 48% from the year before. At a time when you’d expect the numbers to rise with consumers toting around shopping bags full of holiday gifts, these lower numbers do not speak well for the year ahead. The company also reported that ad spending on entertainment sites plummeted 42% in the past year.

So what can we expect to see in 2009?

SEM spending will be flat. Why? Tightening budgets, lower CPCs and a decrease in a number of competitors due to bankruptcy. Compared to other demand generation vehicles, this cost-effective approach should weather the financial storm and provide marketers with the justifiable spending they seek. JP Morgan predicts search spending will increase 23.4% in 2009. We believe that number is very optimistic.

Display ad spending will fall sharply. Until someone develops a model that can deliver the rich, branded content of display ads at CPC prices of search ads, marketers should be wary of the high cost of banner ads. Springbox anticipates a large online ad network will change to a cost-per-click model in 2009 in order to generate new value from a rapidly declining asset.

Social media will offer new opportunities for customer engagement. As an alternative to display ads, social media spending may well increase. Marketers will incorporate these tools into their arsenal as a way to understand how consumers view their brands. Improved tracking of visitor engagement along the purchase path will enable marketers to quantify the value of their social networking efforts. The current financial climate is the perfect time for marketers to take stock of their marketing plans. Every line item — traditional or digital — should be working together to drive conversion and add brand value.

Thanks to Robert Raiford for contributing valuable insight to this article.

I stumbled upon this video about innovations in mobile technologies from trends and innovations company PSFK. It’s a little long, but it’s worth your time. The video covers up-and-coming ideas in mobile marketing, as well as the strategic implications of new technologies.

Of particular note is the discussion about location-based services (around 14 minutes into the video), and whether they should be thought of as a stand-alone application or an aspect of larger marketing activity. Potential for information overload certainly appears to be possible if users opt into too many mobile applications or services. Then again, the user is in control and can holster their handheld if things get shaky.

When it comes to content, new technologies usher in new variables to the conversation. In short, it’s not just what and how we communicate, it’s where we communicate. Can’t wait to see how that line item gets handled on a creative brief.

We all experience that “blank canvas” moment now and then. Sometimes it even happens on projects we’ve already created concepts for when we’re tasked to dream up more. How can we be expected to come up with fresh ideas when it feels like there’s nowhere else to turn?

Unfortunately, there’s no pharmaceutical cure for blank canvas syndrome — but you can work around it. Here are some suggestions:

• Break. Get outside the office and take a 10-15 minute walk to clear your mind.

• Collaborate. Get a group of co-workers or friends together and start brainstorming.

• Explore. Read a design book, pick up the latest issue of How or visit your favorite agency websites, design trend blogs or awards sites for inspiration.

• Illustrate. Start drawing or writing ideas down. It’ll help spur some creativity.

Remember: Whenever you feel the need to push the reset button on your brain, do something else until you’re ready to get back to work. Procrastination isn’t the answer, but pressure only distracts you from finding the perfect idea. Besides, you never know where you’ll find inspiration for the next award-winning concept.

Increasingly, web services are an integral part of user experience (UX) on the internet. Web services are behind everything, from the gadgets on your iGoogle home page to your favorite apps in Facebook.

The first step in the internet’s evolution was all about the portal — AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google all vying for eyeballs and clicks. Now that the internet has matured a bit, we expect more from it.

Web 2.0 has been the next logical step. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook; social media sharing sites like YouTube, Flickr and Last.fm; auction sites like eBay and Craigslist and social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg — all improve upon early web concepts with new features (tags, widgets, etc.) that make extensive use of web services. These companies have created valuable properties online, and the next growth phase will rely on using web services to integrate and remix existing content.

This is where RESTful web services come in. REST stands for Representational State Transfer. In essence, a RESTful web service uses the web the way it was designed to be used. Each entity is represented by a url so that resources can be accessed in a clean and logical manner. The photo hosting site Flickr is a good example of a site that follows RESTful web service practices, even for its user-facing pages.

This means that I can access all of the Springbox photos via the url:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/springboxinteractive 

If I want to see all Springbox photos that were posted on August 8th, 2008, I can go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/springboxinteractive/archives/date-posted/2008/08/08

 Or if I want to see all of the photos with a tag of “Austin” I can go to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/springboxinteractive/tags/austin

As you can see, these urls have meanings that correspond to the layout of the web service. Once the layout is understood, it’s easy to access different resources: simply change part of the url. For instance, given the examples above, I  know at a glance that the url 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/springboxinteractive/archives/date-posted/2008/04/03

has all of the photos that were posted on April 3rd of last year.

This simplicity of design is one of the things that make RESTful web services so useful. By using meaningful urls in a logical manner, RESTful web services (and sites like Flickr that adopt these techniques for their customer-facing pages) expose resources in a highly transparent manner. In the case of Flickr, this encourages exploration, making it easier for the user to find the content they’re looking for. In the case of web services that utilize the REST design model, it means developers can more easily integrate and create valuable new properties based on that service.

Another key aspect of UX is responsiveness, and RESTful web services are very lightweight in this regard. Sure, your rich media application can have all kinds of bells and whistles — but if it takes forever to load and use, no one will care. Because RESTful web services provide simple XML (or JSON) documents over HTTP (just like user-facing web pages do) they represent a bare-metal approach to providing data on the web. This means that sites and applications (Flash, Silverlight, etc.) that are designed to correctly utilize RESTful web services will typically perform better than ones that rely on the more heavyweight alternatives like SOAP.

The internet has changed dramatically over the last few years. Sites like YouTube and Facebook have expanded the vocabulary of the web, and end-users are no longer content with a static site that offers little in the way of interactivity or integration with the greater web ecosystem. Web services are the key to providing this integration of data and functionality, and RESTful web services currently represent the most efficient and unobtrusive means to that end.