Avenue A/Razorfish forecasts that search marketing's share of online advertising spend will decrease in 2006 because brand marketers will boost their online budgets - some by 20-30 percent - writes ClickZ, citing the agency's "2006 Digital Media Outlook" report. However, verticals such as travel and technology that tend to focus on direct marketing will likely be increasing offline spend instead, as in the case of Travelocity's use of TV advertising.

Another prediction is that online advertising networks will confront far-reaching consolidation, and the successful networks being those that add incremental value in the buyer/seller relationship via either targeting or aggregation of unique audiences.

The report also points to both online and console gaming as a marketing opportunity, with online games accounting for most ad impressions but console games attracting brand marketers seeking deeper integration with the game play.

Meanwhile, MediaPost writes that Avenue A/Razorfish ad spend more than doubled on entertainment-related sites (an increase of 165 percent), and significantly increased on sports sites (139 percent), community sites such as MySpace (132 percent), finance sites (124 percent) and health sites (30 percent).

CPM display impressions also increased 19-30 percent in those categories, except on community sites, where it decreased 19 percent. In the travel category, CPM impressions declined 35 percent.