The trend is already underway, as more marketers this year are taking money from traditional marketing budgets and using it in interactive advertising, as opposed to supporting interactive efforts with new funding, as was the case in years past, according to the Forrester Research report “US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014,” by Shar VanBoskirk.
“This cannibalization of traditional media will bring about a decline in overall advertising budgets & death to obsolete agencies.
She goes on to say that while ad budgets will decrease, marketing investments won’t, as any money saved by using cheaper interactive media will be put toward funding IT technology and staff, customer service and so on.
As more brands embrace social media, companies are becoming more comfortable using it, even as the sector is still developing tools, metrics and benchmark standards.
Search marketing continues to do well, in both adoption, today 80 percent of marketers use it, and money spent. “Search marketing accounts for 59 percent of the overall interactive pie. We project spend on paid listings, which includes paid inclusion, and search engine optimization (SEO) to grow at a CAGR of 15 percent, to $31 billion by 2014,” according to the report.