Forrester clients can see the research here.

It’s been a couple years since SSPs (and their buy-side cousin DSPs) were truly the rage in ad tech investor circles; nonetheless, they remain more relevant for their clients than ever as monetizing indirectly sold inventory continues to challenge digital publishers. The 6 vendors we reviewed – Admeld, AppNexus, Doubleclick ADX, Pubmatic, Right Media, and Rubicon Project – are by no means new to this game. Still, we were astonished at how quickly these vendors and enhancing and expanding their product offerings – even over the course of the Wave process. With that in mind, here a couple of key observations on the SSP landscape that will lend some useful context for the report:

Earlier this month, Forrester published a report on audience data management platforms (DMPs) for digital publishers. It’s a testament to the rapid pace of change in this space that our outlined vendor landscape is already somewhat outdated. Last week, Adobe announced the acquisition of Demdex, a pure-play data management platform that’s been gaining traction with both publishers and advertisers. This is the first of what I believe will be multiple strategic acquisitions of DMPs in 2011. Forrester will have much more research on data management platforms and the evolution of media buying later this year, but first a few thoughts on what this acquisition means for the interactive marketing ecosystem:

• Data management platforms are more than just a shiny new object. Data-driven media buying is real and -- barring regulatory Armageddon -- there’s no turning back for digital advertisers and publishers. The addition of data management platform capabilities to the Adobe online marketing suite does much to legitimize the space and bring DMP technology to a wider client pool.

I spent last Wednesday at the Yahoo! investor day conference in Silicon Valley where Yahoo! execs outlined the future of one of interactive marketing's largest players. Yahoo! spent a large part of the day on its content and audience, touting its efforts in customization, mobile, and social integration and demoing a slick and creative web-based email client for the iPad. It was nice to see Yahoo! show off some content innovation, but what I (and I suspect many of the financial analysts in the room) were really interested in was Yahoo!'s approach to advertising and its revenue projections. That's not to say keeping and growing its audience isn't key to Yahoo!'s advertising offering. Yahoo! is as close as the web has to a "must buy", TV-scale property and that in and of itself is a strong incentive for media buyers to keep pumping dollars its way. Still, the future of Yahoo! as well as the broader online media industry isn't just about obtaining the largest audience, it's also about effective monetization.

Yahoo!'s own projections bear this out. Let's take a look at some numbers presented by Yahoo! CFO Tim Morse:

That +4-5% number labeled as "volume" is what Yahoo! expects to get from its content and user experience initiatives. The +6-7% that Yahoo! labels as "yield" is all about monetization. Yes, scale and audience engagement are going to be significant contributors to Yahoo!'s revenue growth, but even more important will be convincing marketers that an ad on Yahoo! is worth more than it is today. Some of this will come simply as the economy turns around and demand for advertising grows. Still, it's going to take more than just passive efforts from Yahoo! to hit its projections. So how can Yahoo! do this? I see two core components:

Forrester’s five year forecast of B2B interactive marketing spending has gone live on the Forrester site. This report marks the beginning of a chain of research for interactive marketing professionals at B2B companies. It should be no surprise that B2B interactive marketing spending continues to grow – and quickly at that. We project B2B interactive marketing spending to hit $4.8 billion in 2014, over double an estimated $2.3 billion in 2009.