This just came to me today while watching CNBC, where an analyst from Pacific Crest Securities spoke about businesses increased ad spend on internet ads as a proportion of total spending. He mentioned the fact that since the internet enables targeted, focused, and measurable (etc.) advertising it is increasingly more attractive than traditional television advertising. One question here comes to mind though is how, if at all, will the increased deployment and subsequent customer adoption of IP based TV systems will affect businesses decision to increases internet advertising spending. Conceptually there is no reason why advertisers could not acheive the same levels of focus and measurability with IPTV as they could with internet spending, especially so with what will likely end up resembling ala' carte programming in the next few years.
I'll have to do a little reserach, but it is an interesting question, especially given the relatively lofty valuations the titans of internet advertising (google, yahoo, doubleclick, etc.) have reached.
Production costs of alcohol have always been substantially higher then the costs of surveying and subsequent drilling for oil. When oil was 10$ a barrel, no one was going to go out and refine corn into ethynol for 50$ a barrel. Right now the only reason theres such a tumult about oil is because of the political climate--oh, we rely on unstable countries to fulfill a vital part of our economic supply chain. In other words, blah blah blah. There will always be that.
Once Oil goes below 30$ a barrel, you'll see your oil stocks take a real hit in the groin, and your green companies phase out into another 90 year hibernation. Just this past week oil went sub 70$, whose to say what it will be in three years?
Hind sight is 20/20, if you were to bring up that henry ford quote only 8 years ago, people would have thought you were mildly retarded. All it comes down to is that trends are unpredictable, and when you try to ride them you're doomed to get in too late and leave after they've crumbled. Of course now green is trendy, and your right, that it should have been trendy a while ago--but it wasn't and you shouldn't be surprised. Theres always greed and industrial momentum, no one will change anything if the current system is profitable and works.
5:12 AM
All good and valid points. Producing ethanol is not exactly a very low-cost alternative, however again it does reduce our dependence upon what is a very finite resource which we procure from unstable areas. The adoption of ethanol/gasoline hybrid fuel is not so much an attempt to reduce the cost to consumers, but to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. As far as that goes, only time will tell, but I highly doubt the price of oil will ever dip below $40/barrel. New technologies are constantly improving the oil companies' ability to find, extract, and refine black gold, but it is extremely unlikely that global demand will wane anytime soon. At the same time, economies of scale and technological innovations are likely to also reduce the cost of producing ethanol, making it more of an economically viable additive to gasoline.
The real monemaker/driver of change will be the development and widespread adoption of the hydrogen fuel cell for vehicles. Actually the real important piece`of the puzzle is figuring out how to efficiently and cost-effectively produce and distribute hydrogen fuel. Currently we lack the infrastructure and capability to profitably produce the quantities of hydrogen necessary to lessen our dependence on oil.