Brace yourself. We’re in for a lot of ugly attempts at Webvertising intended to be so compelling that you just have to forward it to 10 friends. Or maybe 20.

From Jib Jab and Subservient Chicken to crash this trailer and strip poker with Victoria’s Secret models and Bob’s cube and so many others, it seems like everyone’s trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

But here’s the problem: As we see more and more of this stuff, the bar that establishes what’s compelling continues to be raised. Yesterday’s cool thing that you just had to send to 10 friends is tomorrow’s “big deal, I’ve seen that before, and done better — what else you got?”

Takeaway for marketers: Manage your own expectations: A flashy lightning show creates momentary oohs and ahhs, but real value will have a more lasting impact.

“There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
—Dorothy Parker

I upgraded my iTunes to version 4.9, which makes exploring the world of Podcasting as simple as can be. After diving into those waters, I have a few questions:

This is what all the fuss is about? Do we really need all these sonic blogs that sound like audiobook versions of executive summaries of badly written business books delivered by a voice made for silent film? Where’s the wit? The style? The personality? The entertainment value? The information value? The ability to write for the ear instead of the eye? The ability to read, fer Chrissake? The understanding of radio as theater of the mind?

Podcasting is simply short form radio delivered via a new distribution channel. At this point, though, Podcasting isn’t even at the level of college radio … it’s middle school kids doing cafeteria announcements.

Mark Cuban has a pretty good outline over here of how it’s all likely to shake out by 2008 or so.

Some new top-level domains have been approved: .jobs, .travel, .eu, and perhaps most significant, .mobi.

As Reuters reports about .mobi: “The new domain name was requested by a group of powerful mobile phone operators and handset makers, which set up a joint venture to encourage companies and Web site designers to create mobile Web pages.”

Those pages will, of course, fuel the use of phones for more than just talk. It’s an area of huge growth: Mobile data revenues are expected to double in 2006 to $5.8 billion.

Now couple .mobi with the continued expansion of the mobile market to an ever-younger audience, for whom a phone is becoming the technological Swiss Army knife of their lives. How’s this: The global market for pre-teen mobile services is expected to be $43.1 billion by 2009.

As far as kids and mobile phones are concerned — or mobile phones themselves, for that matter — you ain’t seen nothing, yet.

There were 37.9 million broadband subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 2004, and broadband is now available to 99 percent of the country, according to ClickZ, which also reports that the population of active Internet users in the U.S. is 137.54 million.

The move to broadband is clearly underway, but let’s do a quick reality check: ClickZ’s numbers indicate that 72.5% of active Internet users in the U.S. are not accessing the Web via broadband.

Or not: According to WebsiteOptimization.com, broadband use in the U.S. is nearing 60%.

Takeaway for marketers: Statistics can be fluid things. Nevertheless, it’s possible that a larger percentage of your audience than you think is still accessing your site via dialup.