Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Segmenting segmentation; bad tech predictions; activity streams are the new black; consumers using online search for offline research, and more

What segmentation is right for you?
“There are three main types of segmentation,” says ClickZ’s Neil Mason. “Demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, and attitudinal segmentation. But which one is best? It really depends on what problem you’re trying to solve.”

The Internet’s doomed—and other bad tech predictions
Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo takes on the 1995 prediction that the Internet was doomed to fail, and discusses how you can avoid making bad predictions about technology in the future.

“Activity streams?”
It’s an idea for a new, free, more open Internet model, and it may just be the next big thing. And Yahoo! is right there, innovating. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick explains what activitystreams are and what they may mean for the future.

Even if you’re brick and mortar, you still gotta be online
This comes by way of Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk. According to a recent poll, 94 percent of consumers did some research online prior to making a purchase. While e-commerce only makes up four percent of U.S. retail sales, people overwhelmingly (61 percent) use Internet search to research a purchase.

Creative Spotlight: Verizon’s “Big Red”
We expect literature and film to be self-reflexive. Art refers to itself. L’art pour l’art, right? For example, in the Oscar-nominated Quentin Tarantino film, “Inglorious Basterds,” nearly every scene is an homage to another film. But advertising? Not usually. Advertising tends to be all about the next big thing with little regard to the advertising of the past. But Verizon has recently released an ad that riffs on the iconic “Big Red” chewing gum TV commercial. It’s pretty clever, though don’t watch it more than once because the jingle will take over your brain (which we guess means that it’s working).

— Michael Mattis