Currently, less than 10 per cent of ad spend is allocated to online advertising, Many businesses are losing out on the significant opportunities that exist today to deliver highly targeted messages to the exact people they want to reach. Largely, it's a fear issue and in a world that is changing so rapidly, it is hard for everyone to stay in tune with just what's possible. As a result, they tend to lose out by not trying out and implementing new ideas.

But staying away from the online world will also hurt the revenue potential of most companies, especially SMBs, and even more so in Asia. Between 2005 and 2009, the global Internet population increased from fewer than one billion to more than 1.6 billion; by 2014, it is projected to grow by another 42 per cent. The bulk of the population growth will come from Asia, which will represent 44 per cent of the online population in 2014.

Although online population does not immediately correlate with online spending, businesses need to grasp the changing global online population numbers in order to understand the dynamics of the markets in which they currently operate, and plan for international expansion.

A new paradigm is taking root. It is basically called the 'three screens' approach where consumers are always in front of one or more of these three screens: the computer, the mobile phone, and/or the television set. Common content is increasingly becoming prevalent on all three, more so as the computer doubles up as a TV set, and the cellphone as a computer.

Common content gets pulled - and at times meshed - with the medium. For instance, Yahoo! has a long-standing partnership with Associated Press to provide AP's world-class content. Yahoo! News pulls content from 200 odd global news sources and Yahoo! Finance has 70 content partners and pulls in trusted financial data from multiple data providers.

The goal for business is to target and measure. Targeting comes from using software tools to help advertisers reach the right audience with the right message. And measurement is for marketers to gauge the offline sales impact of their online advertising with programs such as Yahoo!'s Consumer Direct, for example. That's how the game will be played, going forward, and businesses in Asia need to first be aware, and then be ready to play the game and win.

This article was first published in The Business Times.