Wherever you turn it seems that personalization in regard to search engine optimization is discussed at a tone of voice as if the End Of The World is nigh here.

Personalization will change search engine results. You will see this, I will see that. No more ranking #1 for term X no matter who and where you are.

So? If there is anything to report here it is that search engines are working hard to give us organically what we normally could only get with paid search: targeting.

According to The Globe & Mail and Keith McArthur, online advertising in Canada surpassed the one billion dollar mark in Canada in 2006, and is expected to rise a further 32% this year. It also represents an 80% increase over 2005.

This is apparently about 8% of the total advertising spend in Canada, but those numbers will be confirmed in coming weeks/months.

So how does it play out?

According to the article, the lion’s share at 36% is display advertising; with search advertising at 35%; classified at 27% and email advertising at 2%.

MSNBC and the David C. Churbuck article Google and the Rebirth of Banner Ads provided not only some interesting insight into the Google Doubleclick deal, but also this little nugget way, way, way, way down the article, and it’s a long article so perhaps if reading it, you might have zoned out. It is after all Friday.

I could have written “thoughts for the weekend” but decided that sounded too intense. No, let’s take this Friday to sit a moment and look over some more or less random tidbits.

Hmmm….

After a week of doing this and that in search I can’t shake off the feeling that something’s afoot in search engine land.

Different from ranking shakeup complaints, there seems to be a growing discontent, some kind of unease with Google.

On the heels of the Google Doubleclick story, and the Google Clear Channel story and the Yahoo print story and the ebay TV story and the Spotrunner tv story and the…

Well, you get my point.

Onilne advertising is only beginning to heat up. And while traditional advertisers have their eyeballs askance and their eyebrows furrowed at the antics of the upstarts, the upstart as looking at traditional advertising models with disruptive technologies in mind and rate cards in sight.

Red Herring announce today in its YouTube Lining Up Summer Ads article that pre-roll and post roll ads will become a part of the YouTube experience this summer.

Jen Evans of Sequentia spoke this morning at AIMSCanada regarding etribes and online communities.

She listed seven reasons why a company should consider a community or Web 2.0 strategy.

They are:

Each on its own is a good reason. All of them together are compelling.

Interesting research out of Forrester Research by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff entitled “Social Technographics” in which they assert some interesting observations.

Not the least of these is that the customer base should define the approach, and not vice versus as tends to be the case and to which I’m inclined to agree. Too often, the shiny stuff is the stuff we put forward because it is, well shiny. And it may well be enduring in the end, but we let the tool define the strategy versus the customer.

As reported last week in the ComputerWorldUK article, Major corporations post sensitive data on Google calendar it appears that you can tell two friends and they can tell two friends, and so on and so on.

Or, you can just make the entry public in your Google Calendar and the whole world can know.

Again I wonder how much information we’re giving Google, exactly.

Or how much information we’re giving our competitor’s via Google.

And Google’s defense is “well, just don’t make it public”. Except the default setting makes it public, the settings being Default, Public and Private.

Ka-Ching!

Of course Doubleclick has to be happy with the recent news that it’s sale brought in 50% more than anticipated by The Street.

Microsoft, not so much. Having been shut out of the the game, it’s now urging regulators to look at the impending Google/Doubleclick deal, according to The New York Times. And AT&T has joined them in the cry.

But it’s not just Doubleclick and Google that are benefiting.

Aquantiive, 24/7 Real Media and Valueclick have also witnessed upticks today, and not insignificant ones.

Well, day four of the New York Search Engine Strategies conference has passed, and it was another full schedule. Three panels yesterday (Linking Strategies, Link Baiting and Viral Search Success, and CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines) then the 8 hour drive back to Toronto (someone forgot to renew his passport).

One of the interesting tidbits I was reminded of today (in the Bookmarking session) and had meant to blog about earlier was the fact that Google had “quiet launched” Google Bookmarks late last year. Such a launch would not normally be cause for excitement, but I think the implications merit some discussion, as they are certainly likely to impact Google’s search results. Accordingly, this blog posting is not to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Google BookMarks versus Del.icio.us, but rather how Google is likely to use this bookmark information.