It’s often been said, you can't know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. Even in the rapidly-evolving world of digital media, this phrase rings true. The trends of the past shape the future, and understanding these trends can mean the difference between success and failure in the months ahead – especially in the challenging economic climate we face in 2009.

Apparently many other minds in the digital media industry have also been wondering where we’ve been, with our latest report, “The comScore 2008 Digital Year in Review,” having already been downloaded by more than 2,000 people. The report gives an overview of what happened in the digital marketplace over the past year, including a look at Internet usage, e-commerce, search, online video, online advertising and mobile.

One interesting finding was the significant growth in the mobile market due in large part to consumer adoption of smartphones, especially the iPhone. The number of smartphone subscribers more than doubled in 2008, while 3G (wireless broadband) penetration increased 43 percent, allowing for a more robust, user-friendly mobile browsing experience.

This and other findings are included in the free report. If you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, you can do so at www.comscore.com/2008-digital-review. Let’s hope 2009 is a positive one for all of us in the digital marketplace!

Social networking was the undisputed poster boy of the online world in 2008, finishing the year with a community representing 80% of the U.K.'s total online population. We would not expect to see such staggering growth in visitor numbers again this year – they are already there – but this is clearly still going to be an important space and a very real and tangible pillar of the emerging "Web 2.0" world that grew up in front of our very eyes last year.

What will be interesting to watch with social networking in 2009, is that this medium has largely established itself as the status quo now, in effect becoming the wall instead of the poster. With 57% of the U.K.'s total social networking community coming from the over 35 segment, and a user base spanning social grades and income levels, it can no longer be considered a niche that is the preserve of the young, or the affluent, or the Star Trek fan.

What you have now is a vast user base operating within a brand new medium that has been specifically set-up to maximise communications. It is possible that this huge audience will begin to fragment again, as borders do when empires swell, and seek more fashionable communities which they feel are closer to their persona. I would not expect to see people abandoning the Facebooks and MySpaces of this world - that would be like your grandfather abandoning the post office for love letters, fridge notes, homing pigeons, but there is definitely room in this community for both homogeny and diversity.

What that in turn would cause is an influx of smaller, more stylised social networking sites into the market, which of course is good news for advertisers looking to deliver more targeted messages to a much more clearly defined set of audiences.

At the WARC “Measuring Advertising Performance” conference at the Royal Garden Hotel here in London last week, comScore’s SVP and Managing Director of Europe, Mike Read, presented a very digestible overview of the current tools available to advertisers and agency planners in the online arena.

Mike covered a range of topics including the segmentation of heavy, medium and light Internet users, behavioral and socio-demographic targeting, and how to maximize return on investment when planning online media campaigns.

One significant take-away from the question and answer session that followed, was how concerned the industry still is with the issue of cookie deletion, and the overstatement of site visitors that site-centric (i.e. server-side) data can cause.

Frank Harrison, Strategic Resources Director at Zenith Optimedia Worldwide, flagged the overstatement of unique visitors based on site-centric data as one of the key challenges facing the industry.

“The cookie deletion issue is big and growing and there is a real need for transparency and clarity regarding it,” said Harrison. “If cookie deletion does indeed mean that reach is overstated by up to 2.5 times, there is an equivalent understatement of online ad frequency, and that needs to be addressed. Advertisers need to know what they are getting for their money online.”

Using cookies as a viable metric to count online eyeballs has been a hotly contested issue for some time in the U.S. and, increasingly, it is being acknowledged by media buyers and sellers alike that cookie deletion inflates server-side estimates of the true number of unique visitors. In fact, a recent legal episode in the U.S. has vividly demonstrated the magnitude of the issue: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=99911

The feedback of Mr. Harrison and others in the U.K. indicates that the debate on this side of the pond has gone from simmer to boil, provoking new concerns in the agency world about the inherent inaccuracies in the use of cookie-based methodologies as a valid way to measure online advertising reach and frequency.

comScore authored an empirical research study on cookie deletion nearly two years ago that has gone a long way towards resolving debate in the U.S. about the impact of cookie deletion on server-side measurement and which demonstrated that panels (which don’t rely on cookie-based counting) are a much more accurate approach. Perhaps it is time that Europe gain a deeper understanding of the issue as well.

If you are interested in learning more about the effects of cookie deletion, please download your free copy of the comScore Cookie Deletion White Paper: http://www.comscore.com/request/cookie_deletion.asp