With last week's Linked-in IPO, you heard all about its significance as the bellwether for other internet companies in 2011. That may well be true for investors on the outside looking in—thinking Linked-in is just a smaller Facebook and, "Wow, just imagine when Twitter goes public."

If you are in B2B publishing, this affects you whether you bought stock or not, because you may be on the receiving end. Qualified lists are often the prime asset a publishing company owns. You know how dear the cost of acquisition per name can be. If you are audited you have the cost of annual updates to think of.

Linked-in probably has the largest and most nuanced list of all, with more than 100 million users. You may know far more about the buying interests of your readers and have less junk names; but Linked-in has just been handed a pile of money and the obligation to spend it to compete with you. Surely their vast reach will attract B2C business also, but B2B is what they are all about.

It was just a month ago, in anticipation of their new playing field, that Linked-in launched a business newsletter with targeted content to each recipient. Judging by the edition I get, they do a pretty good job of selecting news items that match my interests. That, plus Ashton Kutcher.

Of course Linked-in also provides tools you can use for your own marketing; and we're big fans. We have found the 'B2B Publishers' group we formed terrifically helpful (and hope you will join if you haven't). This IPO will, indeed, feed investors' herd mentality and drive some new internet "bubbling;" but B2B publishers have more at stake than most investors.

U.S. online advertising revenue hit its highest sales in history, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).  Media Post reported this week "domestic online ad revenues hit $6.4 billion in the third quarter of the year." That is an increase of 17% compared to last year.

Comparing growth to 2009, the worst economy since the internet was invented, may not sound impressive. But "best ever" with nothing but growth predicted is worthy of notice.

Comparing growth to 2009, the worst economy since the internet was invented, may not sound impressive. But "best ever" with nothing but growth predicted is worthy of notice.

The article pointed out that video advertising led the pack, "climbing 31% in the first half of 2010," reaching 10% of the overall ad spend.

"New magazine launches slowed down in he third quarter of 2010 compared to that of 2009. . . . 186 compared with 211" by this time last year, according to Samir Husni, known to some as Mr. Magazine.

Since Husni only counts magazines sold on newsstands. If subscription oriented and business-focused periodicals are added in, a conservative estimate would have to put the figure over 200. How many people would guess any new titles were being introduced?

A possible $3 billion in new revenue for the magazine and newspaper industries was predicted by 2014, according to a report released this summer.

Next Issue Media sponsored the study by consulting firm Oliver Wyman, according to Folio magazine. Of interest in the testing done, "30% of renewing subscribers chose a bundled print and interactive edition, at a 33% premium to the stand-alone price of either."

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A multitude of recent reports indicate online advertising is increasing by leaps and bounds.

According to Media Life, a July eMarketer report predicts in a stagnant global economy online ad spending will "hit $61.8 billion in 2010, up 11.9% from $55.2 billion in 2009."

Dwarfing that forecast, an Ad Ops Online headline proclaimed, "Digital Ad Spend Grows 47% in First Half of 2010." This was reported by the Rubicon Project , which analyzes the web's 20 most heavily-trafficked sites.

An article in Forbes quotes an SNL Kagan report that overall U.S. advertising in 2010 will only grow 2.8% (from a dreary 2009). Apparently the sky-high online sales increases will be dragged down by their prediction of a 7.5% drop in print ad revenues.

A four-year-old publishing company called Demand Media, which churns out an astounding 5,700 articles and videos daily, filed with the SEC this month to sell an initial public offering. Their IPO anticipates raising $125 million for a company which has never made a nickel of profit. That would value the company at US$1.5 billion.

The editor of Demand Media is an algorithm which analyzes search terms bought from search engines and ISPs. It digs down a level to see what the question is. If the term is apple pie, what is really being asked: how warm to heat it, what wine goes best with it or how many apple pies were sold in France last year?

This data is then crossed with the advertising value of each, be it advertisers of cookbooks, wines or French vacations. The result is a request for the perfect article that will both answer the question and get maximum ad dollars from an ad network.

Demand Media has been paying writers 1¢ per word, but they are about to reduce that. Soon writers will take a chance, working free and getting some small piece of any ad revenue earned by those ads the article attracts.

This highly hyped and fast-growing online publisher expects to produce one million articles and videos per month soon. They do own some of their own websites which together make them the 17th largest web publisher, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"These content-creation models, sometimes referred to as 'content-farms,' have stirred controversy by churning out poor quality stories," Emily Steel wrote in an Aug. 12th WSJ article.

"Because our business is transforming traditional content creation models and is therefore not easily understood by casual observers, our brand, business and reputation is vulnerable to poor perception," Steel quoted from the IPO filing.

The company was founded in 2006 by the former chairman of MySpace, Richard Rosenblatt.

For a great article on Demand Media, see Wired October, 2009 article "The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model," by Daniel Roth.

More than 40 websites serving buyers of industrial technology are among the first participants in an advertising co-op forming to enhance mutual revenues.

From leading trade magazines to quality content aggregators, we are organizing to increase our revenues. For more information, use the email link above.

"We've turned the engineering fire hose at Google towards display advertising," Neal Mohan, vp in charge of developing display ad products, told the Wall Street Journal recently. Independent publishers may be the ones who end up all wet.

To prove it they announced a deal with Omnicom, the world's largest ad agency, to place hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising through Google's ad exchange.

"The media business is fundamentally changing," Omincom Group Digital CEO Matt Spiegel told Adweek.. "A key element is sophisticated technologies at the center of the transaction process."

Many question the propriety of an ad buyer becoming contractually tied to an ad seller. Adweek pointed out the built in conflicts of interest in a July 15th article by Brian Morrissey,  "Omnicom could use Google-owned technology to bid on display ads offered through a Google-owned auction platform that relies on Google's ad network for a big portion of its inventory."

He concluded, "Online ad exchanges are gaining momentum as agencies look to buy inventory based on specific audience segments."