Put simply; in 2009, the Internet will find its way back to the people.

There’s been a constant struggle between capitalism and progressive sharing of information on the Internet since Licklider and/or Roberts (depending upon whether you believe in the chicken or the egg) picked up that first microchip and said “Let there be global data.” The role of marketers in our era is to expose segments of people, and match them to products and services through what we all commonly refer to as advertising. This creates a symbiotic relationship between marketers and consumers; though many consumers wish all marketers would go away and stop bothering them, marketing actually serves (though it may seem inane) an important role in the distribution and introduction of products to a virtual marketplace. It’s the old adage that people don’t wake up in the morning wanting a toaster with multiple settings; they are first shown the benefits of it and people just like them who are already enjoying the freedom of toasters with multiple settings.

So how does this directly apply to you and I

(and the collection of social mediaphiles) surfing the net, not for new toasters, but rather for members of the opposite sex and going on MySpace to make silly picture comments? One hyphenated word: Banner-blindness. In other words, it’s the phenomena apparent in generation X/Y and younger, which renders certain third party advertising relatively ineffective. This is a subconscious trend prevalent with the youth that have grown up net surfing, emailing, friending, etc. and have conditioned themselves to ‘pay no attention’ to online advertising, thus breaking the symbiosis between advertisers and consumers online. Myspace and Facebook are losing major advertising dollars due to failure of performance. Per Business Week, Facebook had initially hoped to generate between $300 million and $350 million in revenues for 2008—but lowered that forecast to $250 million to $300 million. MySpace ad revenue forecast was cut for 2008 by more than 22 percent—from $755 million to $585 million. Projections have dramatically reduced for 2009 to boot. Of course the economy has seen better times, but so has traditional offline advertising. Marketing dollars are flying to the net faster than the swallows to Capistrano. Search ad revenue (14.9%) and video revenue (45%) are poised for substantial growth on the net in 2009. One of the major question marks of the coming year is the performance of Social Media Display Advertising (recently approximated at 10% growth according to eMarketer, which was projected as high as 15% growth for ‘09 in August. To the waking world, social networks are pointing to the economy as a crutch to their feeble projections. In the trenches, there is a much different story.

“We have to really limit our buys on the social networks. Impressions are exorbitant, but our advertisers are reporting exceptionally poor CTR’s and conversion.” –Display Ad Network Representative (remaining anonymous to keep her job)

Businesses need marketers for the progress of product development and a reasonable brain washing in their respective customer base. Consumers need new products for the development of pop culture gains in human efficiency (and better tasting toast).

So how can both entities overcome this struggle of blindness vs. product consumption and co-exist?

I prophesize that advertising will be put in the hands of the consumer.

Campaigns, product recommendations, and blank endorsements will be the new M.O. and marketers will be at the core of it.

Marketers will provide the means, but ‘we the people’ will provide the ends; hence, the much needed symbiotic relationship to push business. Platforms will be built to allow everyday Internet users to spread good will to citizens of New York on 9/11 (sponsored by Ford), trash talk geo-targeted segments after a major sports victory or loss (brought to you by the NFL), and tell all of their friends the secret to shiny hair is L’Oreal Shampoo (brought to you by L’Oreal shampoo). Advertising will take the back seat to independent consumer-bred messaging.

This is not to say that marketers will be depleted of their reason for existence. On the contrary, they will still play the key role of matching products to segments; but it will be minimized. They will own and create the technology and platforms that publishers and advertisers can directly adopt, even with little to-no prior experience or investment. From there, it’s up to the consumer to make it viral (or desirable).

Viral campaigns are most successful when they are able to breathe and are not smothered with peanut butter and impression sandwiches. Skeptical? Search Google blogs for the first consumer product that comes to mind and count how many times on the first page you find a review, recommendation, or plea for advice relating to that product. Singular marketing is the most effective in gen X/Y.

What that means for the typical holier-than-thou Internet marketer that dreams of being Donald Draper, is that the room is about to get a whole lot nerdier. Previous difficulty in communicating with traditional agencies will become more of an adaptive environment for the offline folks than all of our crazy widgets, gadgets, and cookies that have riddled them for the past 3 or so years.

The outlook isn’t bleak in 2009, it’s liberating.