Rocket Fuel Inc., an online advertising company, may join what's becoming a long parade of technology companies.

If market conditions allow, Rocket Fuel is aiming for an initial public offering in 2012 as the company expands its sales, said Chief Executive Officer George John. Rocket Fuel will have more than $40 million in revenue this year, up from about $16 million in 2010, he said. That's more than Zillow Inc., the online real estate company, had before its IPO earlier this year, John said.

The company, which helps companies place ads on websites and mobile devices in real time, is benefiting from international growth and strong demand from current customers. More than 90 percent of its clients renewed spending on Rocket Fuel in the third quarter from the second quarter, he said. Those customers increased their spending by an average of 50 percent.

The company's backers include Nokia Growth Partners and Northgate Capital. Before a potential public offering, the Redwood City, California-based company plans to raise capital in the first quarter to fund growth and acquisitions, he said.

``If there's a speed limit for us, we haven't found it yet,'' John said.

Other initial public offerings this past year include Groupon Inc., the daily deals site, and LinkedIn Corp., the professional services networking service.

The venture-capital firm recently became a small investor in TrialPay Inc., which lets online merchants to place targeted ads during purchases, Bailey said. (Bailey declined to disclose the exact details of the investment.) It's also an investor in Tremor Media, which serves up video ads to connected TVs and set-top boxes, as well as in online media and advertising network Glam Media, ad platform isocket and online ad network RadiumOne. Draper Fisher Jurvetson also continues to look for mobile advertising startups, Bailey said.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson has become widely known for making bets on ad companies such as AdMob, a mobile-advertising company that was purchased by Google Inc. for $750 million in 2009. In August, comScore Inc. acquired another investment, startup AdXpose, a provider of ads analytics that's used to improve performance of ad campaigns. Draper Fisher Jurvetson sees more opportunities for investors and ads startups.

``The world of online advertising is continuing to evolve, and there are new and very promising opportunities for smaller, venture-backed companies,'' Bailey said. The U.S. online advertising market is expected to reach $31.3 billion this year, up from $26 billion in 2010, according to consultant eMarketer Inc.

Startups focused on serving social-networking companies such as Facebook Inc. in particular may have a big opportunity, Bailey said. Most social sites are still searching for ways to make money off of advertising, and traditional banner ads haven't proved affective, he said.

``We are all familiar with the spectacular valuations that today's hot social digital media properties are commanding,'' Bailey said. ``This investor optimism is also accompanied by very high expectations. A new business model has emerged among these digital media properties: freemium, monetizing a small portion of users.'' That's where TrialPay, which helps sites like Zynga Inc. and Fandango to push users of their free services to pay up, comes in.

``For those guys, selling normal advertising doesn't make that much sense,'' Alex Rampell, Chief Executive of TrialPay, said in an interview.

``The overarching idea is that we are all spending less time in front of our televisions, and more time on our mobiles, social media, casual gaming,'' Bailey said.

Technology publishing giant IDG just may have come up with one killer idea. And no, the answer does not involve scantily clad women or slide shows touting the best nude beaches.

For IDG, the publishers of hundreds of magazines such as PC World and Macworld, the answer was to go against one of the industry’s most sacred notions and create its own online advertising network--with a major twist. Instead of only selling ads for its own properties, IDG would take advantage of the media’s fragmentation and the shift to online advertising by selling ads for other new media properties. In addition, the network also helps IDG Web sites to grow their audience by syndicating their content across the Web to non-IDG properties. (BusinessWeek, for example, syndicates IDG content on its Web site.)

It's a bold strategy that seems to be paying off. Peter Longo, CEO of IDG Syndication and Networks, says that its network is currently serving ads to a combined total 75 million unique monthly readers, up from 20 million 18 months ago when it launched the group. Currently, IDG works with about 200 Web sites, including GigaOm, Slashgear, and Xconomy.com, with plans to expand to 300 sites. All told, those sites serve up nearly 750 million ad impressions per month. Revenue is forecast to grow 100% this year, says Longo. 20 syndication partners have signed on to the program as well.

“For us it’s been a successful strategy,” says Longo, a veteran tech publishing exec who used to work at Ziff Davis and CMP Media. “It’s a way to make a leap from our deep technology past to our Web-based future. You don’t have to own all of your content.”

Sure, the online ad network market is as crowded as Grand Central Station during rush hour. But the networks continue to grow as advertisers seek to reach specific groups or audiences across the Web. IDG competes against many networks, including bigger companies such as AOL and Yahoo!, and smaller networks such as NetShelter Technology Media and Federated Media. Among nearly 500 people polled in Collective Media's May 2009 survey, 89% said they intend to work with ad networks this year, a 5% rise from 2008. However, the same survey said 71% of respondents noted that there are now too many ad networks, up from 62% in 2008.

Longo says IDG Syndication and Networks is trying to gain an edge by offering higher-than-average ad rates, a focus on premium technology content and a global reach. The average rate it charges is $8 to $14 per thousand impressions, with some premium channels going for $25 or more. Revenue is split 50-50 with the publishers. Currently, the company has sales people in 9 countries, including India, Japan and Korea, with plans to expand to 14 countries. It’s expensive but it allows the company to charge higher ad rates to local businesses. “We don’t want to become the biggest network per se,” says Longo. “We want to be the largest network for technology.”

It won’t be easy to grow its ad network with new competitors popping up every day, and brands cutting the number of ad network partners they work with. But IDG seems to making headway by rethinking some of the industry’s most sacrosanct notions and coming up with a unique formula in an increasingly crowded space. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to see more.

Prices for display ads have been dropping for some time. The suspects are easy to identify: the poor economy, which is not only reducing ad budgets but also driving marketers to more direct-response search ads, and the ever-growing glut of inventory on the infinite Web. Dropping ad prices are one reason Yahoo reported disappointing earnings on July 21 and CEO Carol Bartz saw no firm sign of a turnaround.

But there's at least one sign that things may be improving. PubMatic, which helps online publishers run more lucrative ads, says in a new report out Thursday morning that it's seeing a steady increase in the price of display ad space sold through ad networks and exchanges. They've risen 47% since the end of January (35% since the end of 2008, January being a weak month for ad spending). Pricing has risen every month since the start of the year.

What's going on? PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel told me in an email:

There are two fundamental trends driving this rise in pricing:

1) Supply and Demand. On the supply side, we have seen a drop in the number of web services that rely on advertising revenue as their business models, as this model has fallen out of favor. Even some traditional businesses such as newspapers have been shrinking with respect to online presence. On the demand side, recent reports from Outsell and Forrester highlighted that even though total ad spending (traditional and online) has dropped due to the recession, online advertising is growing in terms of both market share and total spend. This includes display as well as search.

2) Innovation in the 2nd channel. In the last 1-2 years, we have seen a tremendous amount of innovation in the ecosystem around the 2nd channel (unsold ad inventory, or what some call non-guaranteed, generally sold on a cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition basis, unlike premium ad space generally sold by the impression for branding purposes). Media exchanges, data exchanges, deep targeting ad networks, ad network optimizers, etc. have been growing in number and scale. As a result, inefficiency in the market is being eliminated and there is more and more data used for ad targeting. This is increasing pricing in the space.

It's best not to read too much into this, since it's based largely on U.S. sites, and only inventory sold through ad networks, not the premium-priced display ads sold directly by publishers' sales force. Also, I've found that studies from various firms tend to vary widely. But any sign of improvement has to cheer beleaguered online publishers.