Some of these may be no-duh, but I jotted down some quick thoughts for 2009:

• Macro: the economy’s pain continues for a while – some positive signs perhaps start to emerge in Q2 perhaps? Commercial real estate and retail suffer really badly in Q1. Okay so basically my guess is as good as yours.
• New exchanges, behavioral targeting exchanges and quasi-exchanges emerge, creating (some) new ad compensation models, and of course leading to some associated weirdness as usual – the Google Exchange which is supposed to supplant the Doubleclick exchange in Q2, AOL, OpenX, Pubmatic and Rubicon doing some interesting things, and other guys entering the market… these increased linkages create more problems and opportunities. Of course Yahoo! has APT; both rollout and the prospect of an API integration therewith will be a trip/adventure most probably.
• All of this leads to more market confusion as the media choices abound and the economy continues its rough road. APIs are the vogue, but workflow gets even messier and more difficult for advertiser s and agencies to handle. Buyer’s market, and yet many agencies have a hard time. Some are prepared, and do very well – and some lines start to be blurred.
• Social media data is increasingly valuable but also regulatory scrutiny increases (see next point) and self-regulation discussions continue – though you would think the administration has bigger fish to fry. There is a lot of value that is being created with behavioral targeting and even just “lite” versions thereof like better demographic targeting.
  

  “The overall message was that the Bush FTC gets an ‘F’ on privacy,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “We’re expecting the Obama team to take a better approach.” (article here)

  And what will Obama administration do? It is so difficult to understand and explain this area to the general public that undoubtedly this will be an area of continued confusion and hair-pulling.

• The industry struggle continues between accountability and advertiser control vs. whatever it takes to make it through the night. A couple of industry initiatives will fail in this area. Look for porn, spyware and adware to continue their unfortunate rise as times remain tough. Government folks and states attorneys general would do well to focus more on the deceptive computer hijacking types and security issues that are really annoying and rob one of productivity . Something that is actually far more damaging than getting targeted by a diapers ad because I visited a new moms website. As usual, offline privacy practices of companies continue to receive far less scrutiny, and the knee jerk reactions to the uses of online data continue.
• Online should continue to become a more important part of the media mix because it’s more measurable (though not totally so) and can be consumed in smaller bite sizes.
• Retail – over 10% of retailers in the US will fail; online becomes a new more dynamic way to buy and find products! A greater shift to online buying and models, and resulting new customer opportunities.Random Link:
  Blodget on 2009 display ads – I won’t say he is wrong, but we will see: