A quick slide to start the week. At the AOP B2B event a couple of weeks back the excellent Caroline Taylor from IBM (@green_goddess ) talked about several things but one was about the opportunities publishers have to win back some brand marketing spend in digital.

(Photo: Tony Hallett)

You might think online advertising is a linear, ever-upward trend. And advertising spending online – including pay-per-click (PPC), social and some other channels is on the rise, sometimes at the expense of other media.

But if you look at the slide you can see brands are spending more on what Taylor/IBM classifies as “Own Websites” (the numbers come from Outsell).
You can bet a lot of that is about real content – beyond brochureware – such as blogs, communities, how-tos and other useful features more associated with traditional publishers (offline or online).

She bills it as a “$67bn Claw-back Opportunity” but in reality that might be the wrong way to think about it. Publishers can do more – and for many the future can still be bright – but brands aren’t going to shy away from a quality, DIY approach which they pursue in parallel.